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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26635573">I do desire (we may be better strangers)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/godbewithyouihavedone/pseuds/godbewithyouihavedone'>godbewithyouihavedone</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Archivist Sasha James, Assisted Suicide, Body Horror, Coercion, Emotional Manipulation, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, M/M, Not Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Self-Immolation, it/its pronouns</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 09:55:58</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>41,943</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26635573</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/godbewithyouihavedone/pseuds/godbewithyouihavedone</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>For ages, it only knew how to worship, taking human bodies and living off the fear of those who remembered.  It never knew love until it became Jonathan Sims.  Now it must fight against every instinct to save Martin Blackwood.  Archivist Sasha, Not!Jon/Martin, and the worst kind of Fake Dating AU.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Sasha James/Tim Stoker</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>301</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>300</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It did not remember its birth, but it remembered its first human catch, and that was close to birth, anyway.  How long before had it drifted across the forest, flying in the gossamer bones of birds and crawling with the trembling fear of prey?  For many lifetimes it did not have enough awareness to recognize itself.</p>
<p>It had always been this way.  Taking and running and trying new shapes.  Food never fulfilled its true desires.  Water and heat gave no comfort.  When it had such things, it felt the satiation of the bodies it wore distantly, like the echo of a memory.</p>
<p>The only sensation that felt right was watching other animals skitter away, though it did not know why.  It only knew the want, bone-deep, to be caught lurking inside something else’s skin.  It longed for nothing but new bodies and new creatures to make flee.</p>
<p>Not all prey were undefended.  It shunned the smallest ones that buzzed and dug inside.  Many-legged spiders could weave against the will, and savage killers with shining maws would sooner devour its form than yield theirs.</p>
<p>The first time it took a human, it chose carefully: young, a straggler, one the others did not watch too closely.  The change was momentous, and agonizing.  Maybe it had felt like this to first be a parrot or a monkey.  But those were trials of long ago, muddled by too many jumps, and a human was worse.  It found a nest of roots underneath a river-bed, crawled inside to thrash and cry.  For days, it hurt so badly, trying to use the mind it had stolen.</p>
<p>When the pain dulled it returned to the group.  It did not yet know how to be a human.  So the others killed it, over and over again, until it could speak and act as they did.  It must be wrong enough to make them wary, but not wrong enough to make them attack.</p>
<p>Even ending those first few takings writhing in blood it was happy, content to smear out of broken bodies and into new lives and next chances.  Once it had tasted the sweetness of human fear, it never wanted to go back.  It loved their minds more than anything.  They felt like a home.</p>
<p>As a human it could learn about what it was.  Why it was.  What it served.  The humans gathered gods that were mere shadows compared to the power it drew from.  They spent their whole lives trembling before falseness, never realizing the irony.  Yet when it found the right person, it held them until they were holy together.</p>
<p>A birth, then, or as close as it would ever know.  And a death, or as near as it could ever have.</p>
<p>It was just about to take another.  Its new prey shivered behind the bedroom door, his confusion and pain lingering in the air.  It knocked quietly, waiting to be let in.</p>
<p>It did not know about the nasty man.  The nasty man did not smell of worship, and he hid his trap carefully.  One moment it was leaning in to turn the doorknob, head full of its prey’s fear.  Then right before it struck, the nasty man caught it and pulled it underneath a relic of the Spider.</p>
<p>It panicked then, thumping against the bindings in the nasty man’s disgusting cobweb table.  Feeding another with its terror instead of gaining nourishment.</p>
<p>Every time it scratched at the surface, the strings tightened, and no one heard it cry.  No one knew it was there.  No one knew it was not the one they remembered.  It grew weak and hungry, aching from so long without, which guaranteed it could not fight the web that held it fast.</p>
<p>Then one day it looked up and saw a woman staring back beyond the gray-brown darkness.  She stretched out her arm to the table, to touch the surface.  It reached up, pressed its spindly fingers against the warm human hand, and pulled itself through.</p>
<p>The woman screamed.  She kept screaming, until it crawled into her throat to close her lips.  When she was gone, it lay on the floor next to the table, trembling.  It had grown used to the scuzzy-colored memories that came with taking, crowding its head and guiding its steps.  But her fear continued to sing through it, long after the sweetness should have faded.</p>
<p>The table was in an antique shop.  On the floor, it gulped down musty air, watched the fading amber light, and tried to shake her echoes.  An old man came running at her scream and helped it up.  Before, it would have known he was the shop owner, and the woman’s friend.  Now, with its full power shackled beneath the hypnotic design of its prison, it fought against the affection rising up from the dead heart it wore.  Pathetic, to be so weak it could not clean out a shell.</p>
<p>It made excuses and fled the shop.  But no matter how far it ran, the table drew it back, and no other humans would welcome it inside.  It stumbled into an alley and retched.  The taste of who she had been still filled its throat.</p>
<p>It could have lured the old man back, made him touch the table.  But he had hardly any customers.  His body might die, and that would pull it beneath the wooden surface again, struggling against silk.</p>
<p>So it lived her life, and searched for friends to help.  Its friends were not easy for humans to find, but it was clever and persistent, and it always knew when something wasn’t right, the way beasts recognized their kind.</p>
<p>“I am trapped,” it told them. “I will take you to the table and you will free me.”</p>
<p>But even with their strength, his friends could not break the bindings.  They bought the table instead, and delivered it to new humans.  There was still its purpose, and that was good.  But the transfers were cumbersome now, and the time between agonizing, moldering in the dark.  It was afraid it would forget what freedom was, the way it could not remember being a lizard or a crab.  Someday, life would only be the thing it used to feel so very long ago.</p>
<p>Death was all it knew, then.  Death felt like cleaning every inch of an empty flat.  It took out bags of notebooks and trash until there was nothing left of the man’s previous life.  Yet the memories lingered, poisoning it with anxieties and resentments that should have melted away in the taking.  It tried to remain cheerful.  The humans found that scarier, for whatever reason, so that was at least amusing.</p>
<p>What had it become?  Reclusive and weak, sticking to one human for years, gnawing with need.  But changing bodies had a cost now, and there were too many carcasses rotting in its soul to take on more pain.</p>
<p>Then its friends visited again.  They had a job they needed done, a chance to destroy their enemy.  The weavers and the watchers often worked together, and it looked like a thing of the Web, so it could infiltrate the seat of the Eye.  To prepare for their ritual of the Unknowing, and make sure the meddling watchers didn’t muck everything up again.</p>
<p>The job sounded amusing, fooling those who believed only in truth.  So it agreed, and went back to its table, and was brought into the sight of the enemy.</p>
<p>Waiting did not get better, shut up in a macabre collection of trophies.  When filth began to slither within the walls, it wondered if being a worm and crawling around the Archive would be better than being a stupid motionless table.</p>
<p>But eventually its patience was rewarded.  A watcher stumbled into the storage room.  He picked worms off his skinny arms and clutched a little black spy to mutter his secrets into.</p>
<p>“Sasha, I’m heading into Artefact Storage right now,” he said. “I heard the fire alarm go off, which hopefully means we’re the last ones left in the building.  I know you talked about the dangers here but I’d take anything over that many worms.  Look, there’s the table you mentioned.  I don’t understand the fascination, honestly, just a simple…”</p>
<p>He stepped closer, drawn in by the same strings.  He reeked of the Spider, despite his other affiliation.  Oh yes.  It would enjoy grabbing this small man and twisting every service he had given to any other power.</p>
<p>“Just a simple…” his words trailed off, sleepy and far away, as his searching fingers moved closer.</p>
<p>Then he saw it looking back.  The others had never noticed, but the others had not had eyes like his.</p>
<p>“Oh god,” he whispered. “Sasha, I think there’s—I can see someone—inside—”</p>
<p>The door to the storage room clicked, and he whipped around.</p>
<p>“Martin?” his voice was full of fear and hope.</p>
<p>But looking to the door, the poor foolish watcher stumbled back into the table.</p>
<p>It found his hips first, hooked long fingers across his skinny frame and pulled him down.  He tried to jerk away, but it was much stronger.  It slid beneath his skin as he flailed out, skull cracking against a nearby shelf.  Fireworks exploded into his vision and he stumbled to the ground.  He curled up and clutched his head, crying softly, still fighting every moment.  It drank in his pain as it peeled him away from his body inch by inch, cutting the strands of compulsion wrapped around his wrists and throat.</p>
<p>It sat up and crushed the black spy box he had brought between its hands, relishing the destruction.  Now they were both free.</p>
<p>It looked down at itself, smiling to see a different skin tone, a new sturdier frame.  The only part left of his original body was a bloody smear from his head injury, still sticky on the concrete.  It ran its fingers through the mess and wondered what its blood looked like now.</p>
<p>“Martin?” it asked, testing its new voice. “Martin?”</p>
<p>The storage room door swung open.  Standing in the light was the closest thing to the Eye itself, smiling placidly.</p>
<p>“All clear, Jon,” said the Eye.  Elias, his memories told it.  It trembled under the gaze of its enemy, waiting for Elias to Know, waiting to be shut up in the table again or worse—</p>
<p>“Where’s Martin?” it asked, though it was still puzzling out who Martin was.  Jon had been asking before so that seemed like the thing to say.</p>
<p>“With the paramedics, I expect.” Elias offered a hand, looking at it with no suspicion whatsoever. “But alive, thanks to you.  I’m sorry it took me so long to activate the fire suppression system.  Seems to have worked, though we have quite the mess down in the Archives.  I didn’t know where you ran off to, are you alright?  I can send for a stretcher if you need—”</p>
<p>“I’m doing fine,” it said, showing off the unmarked skin of its arms.  The few burrowing worms Jon had harbored were already healed over.</p>
<p>“You’ve got a little...” Elias reached into his pocket and handed it a handkerchief, embroidered with his initials. “Clean yourself up and hopefully we can meet them outside.  The paramedics keep making noises about taking Sasha and Martin away for quarantine.”</p>
<p>It chuckled, and wiped Jon’s blood from its hands. “Thank you.”</p>
<p>Elias tucked the handkerchief back into his starched pants.</p>
<p>He smiled widely. “There, good as new.”</p>
<p>It followed Elias into the sunlight, sirens blaring and employees standing around grousing.  Two humans were being strapped into gurneys and fussed over by medical personnel.  They were covered in blood and bandages, but it recognized their voices.</p>
<p>“Oh thank god, Jon’s okay.” The Archivist.  Its enemy.  Elias might be closer to the Eye, but it knew the sick potential in this woman from its friends’ stories.  During their last chance, the previous Archivist alone delayed the Unknowing.  It would not let that happen again.</p>
<p>“Jon?  He’s there?” the other one, the one his memories identified as Martin, turned to look at it.</p>
<p>The watcher had called his name so desperately before it took him over, but Martin was just a sweaty young man, sturdy and broad with too-long bangs that flopped into his eyes.  He wore a lumpy jumper and a lot of bandages.</p>
<p>“I’m right here Martin, I’m alright,” it said.</p>
<p>Martin reached out, woozy.  His eyes wavered, unfocused, over its form, trying to place the new face.</p>
<p>“Jon, I thought you’d…”</p>
<p>The Archivist let out a wincing laugh. “Don’t mind him, he got the worst of the worms and they gave him a bucket of painkillers.  He’s been like this ever since.”</p>
<p>“I don’t mind,” it said, and grabbed Martin’s hand.</p>
<p>That’s when the trouble began.</p>
<p>The moment it touched Martin, the remnants of Jon’s affection closed off its throat with bile, stinging behind its teeth.  Martin’s warm palm felt like needles and knives, like burning flames and crushing pressure, like every force that stalked through their world descending upon its head.</p>
<p>Since it had been trapped, it was forced to experience the worst dregs of humanity.  Their disgusting feelings clung like barnacles even after it discarded them.  The wound within it had grown deeper after each incomplete transformation.  But this thing, this festering ache that Jon had left...</p>
<p>“Sir, step away from the patient,” a paramedic said, and tapped it on the shoulder.</p>
<p>It dropped its grip, and waited for the constriction in its chest to release.  The memories faded with time, even if they never quite disappeared.  They were always stronger in the physical presence of whoever caused them.</p>
<p>The paramedics loaded Martin and the Archivist onto the ambulance.  It watched them drive away, still waiting.</p>
<p>That evening, back in Jon’s sad apartment, it scrubbed its hands raw, until the skin hurt, until no trace of his blood remained beneath its fingernails.  It lay down in the dark and waited the whole night.</p>
<p>But when it closed its eyes, Martin’s face was the only one it could remember: his pained smile stretching the bandages on his cheeks, and behind his dark hair, endless mocking strands of silver web.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Statement of Jonathan Sims, archival assistant at the Magnus Institute, regarding the Institute being attacked by the entity that used to be Jane Prentiss.  Statement recorded direct from subject, 29th July, 2016.”</p>
<p>It smiled at the Archivist. “Where should I start?”</p>
<p>The story it told was true enough to fool her gaze, to spool into the whirring plastic spy.  It combined wisps of memories with the statements it had overheard from the rest.  Any incongruous details would smooth over, just as the Archivist didn't consider how much taller it was than Jon, how little it fit his old mannerisms.</p>
<p>It could do research too.  While the Archivist and Martin were on leave, it had found every tape that contained Jon’s voice.  They refused to crumble in its fists like the first, so it hid them away.  When the Archivist asked about Michael, the fractaled creature that had saved Jon from filth, it knew enough to respond appropriately.</p>
<p>“Are you feeling alright, Jon?” the Archivist asked.</p>
<p>It shrugged. “I wasn’t sleeping much before.  I try to trace back but some parts start to blur.”</p>
<p>“Well, there’s still plenty of work to be done, but you should head out early tonight.  Without your help, we could never have evacuated.  You’ve earned some rest.”</p>
<p>“Thank you, Sasha.”</p>
<p>“Of course.  Can you send for Tim to give his statement?”</p>
<p>“I’ll go find him,” it said.</p>
<p>Tim wasn’t at his desk, or in the main archives room, or by the printer.  It scouted around before hearing chatter drift in from the kitchen.</p>
<p>“You never mentioned what was going on,” Tim said.</p>
<p>“Because this isn’t really—I don’t think that stuff matters—and we’re at work, okay?”</p>
<p>The panicked voice that answered was definitely Martin’s.  It would have known without the hot flare of adoration that seized in its stomach at the sound of him speaking.  It did not need this gunk rattling around in its body.</p>
<p>Tim laughed, and there was a rustle and a thump, like he was patting Martin on the back. “The way he ran out after you.  Like a knight in shining mom jeans.”</p>
<p>“Well yeah, that was a bit…” Martin’s tone went soft and dreamy.  It could remember him speaking this way, in Jon’s past, though it had never heard him in person. “But I wish he thought for a second before charging in.  He’s going to get himself hurt.  He almost did.  And that’s not kind or good or romantic.”</p>
<p>“Speak for yourself. Ugh, lucky goose.  I can’t believe I’ve been living here with only worms to hold me close at night while you were running around with your secret office boyfriend.”</p>
<p>“Jon’s—hi Jon,” Martin squeaked.</p>
<p>It startled.  They’d been moving toward the door and it hadn’t noticed, too busy listening to Martin, too busy fighting off ghosts.  Now Martin was leaning out the door, clutching a cup of tea, coppery blush staining the worm scars on his cheeks.</p>
<p>“Hi,” it said, willing its voice to remain steady. “Sasha, um, wants to see you in her office, Tim.  For a statement.”</p>
<p>“She was recording enough during the invasion, don’t you think?  What more evidence does she need than the physical damage we’ve all been through and a whole freaking dead body?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know,” it said, shrinking back.  Tim may have been complaining about the Archivist, but he was looking between it and Martin.</p>
<p>“Well, posterity awaits,” Tim said.  He saluted, then sauntered off, leaving Martin awkwardly hanging around the doorway.</p>
<p>Martin was close enough to touch.  It resisted.  That would not dispel its suffering.  Instead, it watched him as he scurried back into the kitchen and fumbled around with the teabags.</p>
<p>Flashes of Jon’s experiences clouded its mind: Martin pressing the top of his hand while he handed him a file, rubbing dust from Martin’s stubbled chin after days spent cataloging.</p>
<p>The memories of Martin demanding to see to his shoulder after the Michael thing cut him were particularly vivid.  They had been in the same kitchen.  Jon had slipped off his vest and unbuttoned enough of his shirt to expose the edge of his neck.  Martin had stood over him, large hands hovering at his collar, while he cataloged the damage.</p>
<p>Afterward, he had walked Jon through how to disinfect the wound, because Jon said he didn't want to be touched.  Jon had been lying.  The warm blood under Martin’s skin had comforted him, woven a false safety that snarled and knotted in all his secret places.  Now that it wore Jon there was no hope of untangling itself from that history.</p>
<p>It had been parent, wife, husband, child, mistress, best friend to many.  Before imprisonment, it imitated the language of affection as naturally as pretending at sleep.  Was this the dizzying need that had fooled so many doomed humans on the other end of its pantomime heart?</p>
<p>There was no way to protect itself.  To remain undetected by Martin, it would have to act as Jon did, or close enough.  Their bond was too strong to let Martin’s doubts fade away into its power.  Or maybe it could leave him.</p>
<p>It closed the kitchen door, leaving them alone in the room.  Both were trembling.</p>
<p>Martin steadied his hands and began to methodically brew the tea. “You heard,” he said.</p>
<p>“What does Tim know?” it asked.</p>
<p>He turned, and his eyes burned into it, shining with shame and love. “I didn’t tell him anything.  He’s just bored and nosy.  So is <i>this</i> something you don’t want him to talk about?”</p>
<p>It fidgeted with its sleeve, grasping the material to keep from reaching out. “No, that’s...if he figured out we were together, that’s not bad, that’s alright.”</p>
<p>“But I thought we weren’t...” Martin exhaled shakily, then instead of finishing his sentence, he thrust a cup of tea toward it.  Anger was rising in the set of his shoulders. “Usually, when someone doesn’t write you back after you both almost die, you’re not really their priority.”</p>
<p>Not knowing what to do, it took the tea from his hands, careful to keep their fingers from brushing one another.</p>
<p>That seemed to help.  Martin sighed, and scratched at his hairline bashfully. “I mean I texted you, from the hospital.  I figured that you didn’t want to talk.  I can take a hint.  We’ve been dealing with a lot lately.”</p>
<p>“My phone wasn’t working,” it said.  Stupid face-recognition, stupid Jon not writing down his passcodes. “I didn’t mean to make you worry.”</p>
<p>“Oh, that makes sense, sorry.” Martin smiled gently, his unease fading, and stepped into its space, leaning up to it. “Then we’re all right?  I know the scars are kind of, uh, not great looking.  The doctors said they’ll fade a bit more, but I understand if you’re weirded out.”</p>
<p>The Martin that Jon knew was whole, and would remain so, frozen in the past.  It could not see anything other than his beauty.</p>
<p>It swallowed deeply, choking on their closeness.  Any planned words of dismissal withered in its throat. “That doesn’t matter.  Martin, I still—”</p>
<p>“I would have gone out there for you too, you know.  I don’t know what would have happened to me then.”</p>
<p>“Everything turned out fine,” it said. “I’m right here.”</p>
<p>Martin stepped forward and wrapped his arms around it.  He smelled mostly like black tea.  It caught a hint of old bandages and dust, and underneath wool and human sweat.  Remarkable, what a fragile thing it held in its arms.</p>
<p>Yet it must never forget that he was the servant of its enemy.  If it could rip out the part of itself that sunk into his embrace, it would claw and scrape until this body bled away.  But no matter how much pain and humiliation it underwent, being Jon was its only chance.</p>
<p>And it wasn’t afraid of Jon’s remnants, no matter how much it hated them.  Wallowing in misery did not blasphemously offer worship to another, not even the prying Eye.  All could be endured, for a worthwhile end.</p>
<p>“I’ll let Tim know to keep quiet, okay?” Martin said, mumbling into its shoulder. “No big deal, I promise.  I know you really care about how the others see you.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, that sounds good.” Keep everything as before.  Learn to burn inside, to fight the leftover dregs of affection for this man instead of running away from him.  Help Martin trust it, and turn to it instead of his friends.  It could build secret after secret between them.  Guarantee that his nervous devotion kept him off balance until no one would ever believe his word over that of “Jon”.</p>
<p>“I’ll catch up with you later.” Martin leaned up and kissed it on the cheek.  It gritted its teeth as dead roses bloomed beneath its skin. “Mind your tea.”</p>
<p>“See you,” it muttered, hands clasped around the warm mug.  It would show no outward sign of its veins flayed open, clotting with a love already wrecked and wasted.</p>
<p>Later that day, Tim swung by its desk.  It wasn’t able to login to the account, so it had been waiting, letting its mind empty.  Most of the tea still sat at its side, cold and bitter, bag bobbing at the bottom.  Every glance at the mug reminded it of Martin, and steeled its resolve for the plan.</p>
<p>“Had a chat with Martin,” Tim whispered.</p>
<p>“About work, I hope?”</p>
<p>Tim leaned on the back of its chair.  Jon had been fond of him in his own way, it discovered, without the static of Martin’s presence interfering.  Amused by how Tim tore through his good sense, like a particularly rambunctious pet.</p>
<p>“Real disappointed you didn’t tell old Tim about this juicy development.”</p>
<p>“The living hive stalking us seemed more important,” it said, smothering a private laugh.  Tim had no idea how much more complicated that little courtship had become.</p>
<p>“Wow, you still can’t understand where my priorities are.  You know I’ll keep mum, right?  Not that dating your coworker is illegal here.”</p>
<p>Hm.  Then why were Martin and Jon sneaking around? “You’ve checked?”</p>
<p>Tim flashed a grin. “Of course.  Dating your boss, however, is not strictly in accordance with the by-laws.  So you stay quiet right back.”</p>
<p>Ah.  The Archivist.  A memory floated by of Tim complaining about their own dalliance, cut short after her promotion.</p>
<p>It grinned. “I will, once she gives you the time of day.”</p>
<p>“Love wins,” Tim said and winked. “Eventually.  I think.  Speaking of, I know we were mates first, so I’m technically supposed to give Martin the if-you-hurt-him speech, but…”</p>
<p>He reached for the end of the sentence, faltered.  It did not have the power of the watchers, but it could sense what he remembered.  Jon had been acerbic, prone to step in with unnecessary information and a distinct lack of tact.  It, however, had eons of experience interacting with humans.  The more lovely it kept its behavior, the more scared and disoriented it made the few those who recognized what it was.</p>
<p>“But?” it asked.</p>
<p>“But I think you two’ll go well together,” Tim said, back to smiling blithely. “So congrats, and I’m always here if you ever feel like dropping a few more details about—”</p>
<p>“Thank you, Tim.”</p>
<p>“Anytime.  No really, any time.  A man’s got to have something to live for in these wormy days.”</p>
<p>It agreed heartily.</p>
<p>In the Unknowing, it would watch the Dance with tears in its eyes as the world was reborn anew.  There would be no more watchers or webs, no hunters or darkness.  Or perhaps there would be, just as before, but who was to know?</p>
<p>It could imagine the aftermath now.  The humans in the Institute still stumbling through their decaying temple to knowledge, seeing only what the glass that was once their eyes let them perceive.  The statements they prized would become sweet music, or jumbles of letters in a language they no longer recognized.  They’d never truly be sure of anything again.</p>
<p>After the Unknowing, it would look like everyone, and no one, forever.  It would be free, truly free.  No web, and no orders, and no limitations, only the glorious chaos of winking into and out of the remaining humans.  The pain it carried from those it had taken would melt away, in a skyline shaped by the fear it venerated.  A walk down the street would feed it like a year of work.</p>
<p>As a faithful servant and their heroic spy, it would ask one boon, and the kind Stranger would surely grant this wish.  In the new world, it wanted to wear a coat made of Martin Blackwood.  It would order the finest tailoring, taking care to preserve the pattern of hair on the arms, the wonderful worm scars up the shoulders and neck, the beautiful tawny color.  He’d be stitched up so pretty, so that every moment they would be touching, and it wouldn’t have to feel a thing.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It brought him dead flowers.  It brought him home-cooked risotto in a plastic container.  It brought him an expensive teapot set with a saucer and cup and loose-leaf tins.</p>
<p>“You’re being a bit obvious,” Martin said, when it presented the teapot.</p>
<p>“You can take them home then.”</p>
<p>Martin stared at the gift. “Uh, okay.  I’m really not mad about the phone thing.  We talked about what happened and we’re fine.”</p>
<p>“I know we’re fine,” it said, and gestured to the teapot.</p>
<p>“Then...thank you.”</p>
<p>It nodded and ducked its gaze, to avoid looking at his smile directly.</p>
<p>Later that day, Tim slammed a statement on its desk. “You’re welcome,” he said.</p>
<p>“Is that Grifter’s Bone?” Martin asked from around the corner.</p>
<p>“Persuaded Sasha to assign you two to investigate. I found the article the statement-giver wrote on the band, so the only part left is a nice sojourn through Soho.”</p>
<p>“Volunteering us to get murdered doesn’t count as being a good wingman,” Martin said.</p>
<p>It glanced at the statement.  “I’ll protect you from the very scary...jazz club.”</p>
<p>Martin huffed a laugh. “Alright, alright.”</p>
<p>He left to grab his jacket, and Tim pulled it aside. “Hey Jon, uh, Sasha doesn’t...seem a bit weird to you?”</p>
<p>“In what manner?”</p>
<p>“She was nice when I asked, but.  I feel like after everything she doesn’t look at me the same way.  Not...not in a romantic sense.  Maybe whatever happened with Gertrude is freaking her out—so just, give her a bit of a berth?”</p>
<p>“Thanks for the warning,” it said.  It would stick with its original plan and avoid the Archivist until it understood her abilities.</p>
<p>Martin ducked back in, his shiny green jacket zipped up to his throat. “Ready to go.”</p>
<p>It gathered the papers into its briefcase. “Lead the way.”</p>
<p>They went out into the drizzling streets and grabbed a bus through Mayfair.  It sat on the end of an aisle.  Martin hooked his arm around the closest rail and started cleaning his glasses off.</p>
<p>“I actually knew about Grifter’s Bone before the statement, if you can believe that,” he said. “I’m not one for metal, or whatever they were supposed to be, but I heard some rumors at home concerts.”</p>
<p>“Home concerts?”</p>
<p>“They have them in huge old houses with local bands.  There’s readings beforehand.  I mostly went for the poetry.”</p>
<p>“And let me guess, you’d stay and clean up afterwards?”</p>
<p>“Actually, yeah.” Martin blinked. “Guess you do know me.”</p>
<p>“Think I’d like the music?”</p>
<p>“Nope,” Martin said. “Plus I have no idea where they are now, I stopped going after...look into enough statements and strangers’ houses aren’t as fun anymore.”</p>
<p>Martin smiled.</p>
<p>He smiled so often, when he was nervous or upset or afraid.  When it gave him beautiful trinkets, there was always surprise on his face before genuine joy.  Almost like it, in a way, papering over any truth that could be glimpsed through the mask with cheerful efficiency.  How could someone so weak serve the Eye?  Perhaps, because he was not the Archivist, Martin must offer his own terror instead of extracting suffering from statements.</p>
<p>It could teach him to stop reaching into himself to satisfy the burning need in the center of the Archives.  Yet in the shards of Jon’s past it could remember, none around the temple had ever mentioned their watchful god.  The creatures of the Stranger talked freely about their work.  But Jon would have no way to know, to tell him.</p>
<p>Besides, it liked to see Martin shiver.  It would like ever so much to be the cause, but needs must.</p>
<p>“Sometimes I go to the recitals at St. James where they have orchestras and things,” Martin said. “You might like those, they’re pretty calming.  Next stop is us.”</p>
<p>The Dean Street Jazz Club was in the basement of a turreted building.  The top two floors were occupied by a shabby café, and only the café was currently open.  They grabbed overpriced coffee and took a table near the stairs.  Martin crept down to investigate while it served as lookout.</p>
<p>But it already knew what he would find. The statement was years old, and the infernal band never performed in the same venue twice.  It could not sense any echoing hum of carnage.  Martin would be safe.</p>
<p>Sure enough, he returned with pictures of the performance space and little else to report.  Due diligence complete, they set out into the rain again.</p>
<p>It held Martin’s hand for stability on the slick streets, clutching the briefcase to its chest.  The smell of rain on asphalt stung its nose as they walked.  Martin led it through Soho Square, brilliantly green in the downpour, lined with smears of flowers.  By the time they gave up waiting for a bus and ducked into a Vietnamese restaurant, it was soaked and shuddering.</p>
<p>They slid into a wooden booth, and Martin stifled a snort.</p>
<p>“Are...are you laughing at me?” its voice came out more of a hiss than it intended.</p>
<p>“Sorry, you just look like one of those birds caught in an oil spill.  Do you want my jacket after this?”</p>
<p>“I’m fine,” it said, ignoring the puddle gathering at its feet.</p>
<p>“Let’s order something to warm you up, okay?” Martin took its hands between his and blew gently, breath warm across its wrists.  His black hair was slicked to his head with rain, and as it watched a drop traced down the side of his face, onto his neck.</p>
<p>The urge rose to reach out, smudge the shining bead onto his skin, and feel the rough edges of his dark stubble.</p>
<p>No.  It did not want to do any of that.  Suddenly, the laminate table between them was far too small, the bench at its back constricting.  Jon would never leave its head, this way, if even looking at Martin summoned his longing.  If it had to play along one moment longer, it would scream.</p>
<p>Thankfully, that was when the waitress stopped by their booth, and Martin bashfully dropped his hands.</p>
<p>They didn’t touch, afterwards.  There was some light teasing about Martin’s taste in bands, Tim’s over-investment in their relationship, and Jon not liking Vietnamese food before they started grabbing lunch together.  Apparently, some of the menu items were close to the Filipino cooking Martin had grown up on, though the base pallet of flavors was different.</p>
<p>When their order came, they ate in near silence.  As an effect of the binding, it endured far more sensation from the bodies it wore.  This meant Martin’s touch burned on its palms, but it also honestly enjoyed the fragrant food.</p>
<p>Together they sipped lotus tea and picked over curry puffs and shrimp rolls.  Martin had chosen the better main dish, a rice bowl with braised pork belly.  When he saw how much it enjoyed the taste, he gave it more than half.  He only had a few sips of its beef noodle soup in exchange.</p>
<p>“I’ll pay,” it said, when the check came up. “You can treat me next time.”</p>
<p>Two days later, its customary tea appeared accompanied by a little purple umbrella with a galaxy pattern on the inner canopy.</p>
<p>“Want to walk to the tube, Tim?” it asked, eager to show off its new reward.</p>
<p>Tim groaned. “I can’t, I’m moving my stuff out of the archives tonight.”</p>
<p>“We can help,” it said, and at the same time, from around the corner, Martin asked, “Need some extra hands?”</p>
<p>“You two are disgustingly nice,” Tim said. “What about we all pack together, then I can grab a car?”</p>
<p>Tim had basically been treating the cot in the archives as a dorm.  They put away a set of string lights, a random assortment of nonfiction, and three football posters.</p>
<p>Tim looked around the newly bare walls. “I’ll miss this place.  Other rooms feel positively damp compared to sleeping in controlled storage.  And at least here I knew exactly how much Sasha was overworking herself.”</p>
<p>“I keep asking her if there’s anything I can do, and she just looks at me funny,” Martin said.  He was wrestling the overstuffed clothes hamper to the door.</p>
<p>“Should we grab drinks sometime?” it asked, although it had no plans to go anywhere outside the institute with the Archivist.  Easy enough to make up a prior engagement.</p>
<p>Tim grinned. “Might help.  You know, when we first started working here, this one didn’t let himself drink around you.”</p>
<p>“I wanted to be professional,” Martin said. “Not say anything stupid.”</p>
<p>“Almost nice to think back to when that was the big worry, huh?  Okay, I can carry the rest out to the front.  Thanks a million.  I’ll do all the filing for a week.”</p>
<p>It rolled its eyes. “Like you’ll stick to that for a day.”</p>
<p>“Have a lovely night, chaps,” Tim said, and somehow managed to waltz from the room while carting fifty pounds of luggage.</p>
<p>He was already in the rideshare when it remembered that he’d forgotten his clothes and their hamper.</p>
<p>The room in the archives barely had reception, so Martin left to call him back and returned sighing. “He’s trying to turn the car around but they’re stuck in traffic.  Apparently he promised Sasha everything would be gone by tomorrow, so we’d have to wait twenty minutes.  Do you have anywhere to…?”</p>
<p>“Nowhere more important than seeing you,” it said.</p>
<p>With no place to sit except storage boxes, they stood around awkwardly until Martin took its hand and brought them down to the empty cot.  It lounged out across from him, close enough that it could feel his warmth.</p>
<p>Martin propped his head up on his fist. “Of course I was scared,” he said. “God, I liked you so much.  And I’ve been alone for awhile.  I wanted to figure out everything between us.”</p>
<p>“Do you know yet?” it asked.</p>
<p>The only real question left, but of course, he could never understand.  That was its nature, what it had done to him in taking over the person he loved the most.  Martin had lost Jon weeks ago.  It was the only one left that remembered.  If Martin knew that he lay a breath from the inhuman creature that had taken Jon away, he would hate their time together as it did.</p>
<p>“Everything shouldn’t feel this easy, right?” Martin reached out, fingers brushing its cheek.  It knew well enough now not to flinch. “I keep waiting for stuff to go wrong.  Like you can’t be this nice to me forever.  Because you’ll figure out that I’m me soon.  And I don’t, I don’t deserve—”</p>
<p>It grabbed his arm. “That’s my decision, not yours.  Martin, I feel so much, when you’re with me, in a way that’s almost painful.  More than I’ve ever felt before. I’m learning more every day, because of who you are.  So you see, that’s the exact opposite of your fear.”</p>
<p>It barely had to lie to comfort him.  Martin took a shaky breath, then pressed their hands together.</p>
<p>“That sounds really intense.  I don’t want to hurt you.”</p>
<p>It tightened its grip. “Too bad.  That part isn’t your choice either.”</p>
<p>“Guess not,” Martin said, and pressed a kiss to the back of its palm. “How are you feeling now?”</p>
<p>“In agony,” it whispered, smiling.  How exciting, to learn the ways of the watchers, to wield the truth and yet cut deep without the victim even suspecting.</p>
<p>“Sorry.” Martin kissed it again, another brand in the same spot. “Sorry.” He moved his lips to its wrist. “Sorry.”</p>
<p>“You will be,” it promised.</p>
<p>Martin made that snort-laughing sound.  He shuffled in closer, and rested his head on its arm.  It ran its fingers through his dark hair.  Almost calming, to summon up Jon’s influence with its own hands, focus on pushing away any affection that seeped into its mind.</p>
<p>By the time Tim returned, Martin had almost fallen asleep.  They held hands on the way to the tube, and it didn’t shy away once.</p>
<p>Ignoring Jon’s echoes hadn’t grown any easier, but it had long learned that even unimaginable horror could become mundane, given enough time.  Sometimes it almost forgot the pull of spiderwebs crossing its fingertips.  Sometimes it almost wanted to be close to Martin like this, unable to muddle out where it began and Jon ended.  How he must have loved him.  He’d called for Martin with such longing.  But it had been the only one that answered, and now it was the one holding Martin in the night, in a victory that stung like an open wound.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>What did it remember of the Archivist?</p>
<p>Jon had worked alongside Tim in Research, and she would drop by occasionally with stories from Artefact Storage. She used to tower over Jon in her chunky heels. After her promotion she tended toward flats, and it was taller, so they were about the same height now.</p>
<p>She had always been ready to fire off a snide little joke with Tim.  They happily complained together, trying to outdo each other with creepy stories. Though Jon’s memories remained hazy at best, it could sense he had admired her unfailing cheer and wicked sense of humor.</p>
<p>But Sasha James had not been the Archivist then. When she took the title, she tried to step back from friendship, or perhaps she had simply switched one facade for another. It knew quite well what formidable weapons masks could be.</p>
<p>Sasha appeared normal to its senses, unlike the cloying, enveloping weight of knowledge that radiated from Elias.  But the Archivist alone could unravel years of worship and workmanship. The assistants grumbled about the mess the previous Archivist had left, and it wanted to laugh until it choked. Misfiled statements were nothing compared to the carnage in her wake. Her burning gaze had seared scars into monsters and men alike.</p>
<p>And the new Archivist had been meeting with the police officer who interviewed them about the murder of her predecessor.  It must not let its guard down.</p>
<p>Tim, meanwhile, had reacted to her new companion by moping and pointedly not saying a word. Apparently he thought they were an item. But he’d looked livelier for the past few days. So it was surprised when he gathered the other assistants into an empty room. His jaw was set and his fingers shook, sending little ripples through the folder he held.</p>
<p>“I dropped by Sasha’s office yesterday,” Tim said. “She wasn’t there, but she’d left her computer unlocked—”</p>
<p>Martin almost squeaked. “Why would you break into our boss’s—”</p>
<p>“Not what happened.” Tim shoved the folder at him. “And if you’re mad about that, wait until you see what I found.”</p>
<p>Inside were printouts of screenshots, logging a text conversation between two numbers. Martin started reading and went pale.</p>
<p>“How did she get this?” he asked, sounding more scared than when he talked about facing down hordes of worms.</p>
<p>“She used to brag about her hacking skills,” Tim said. “Dammit, I can’t believe she’d track us. Jon, there weren’t any from your phone since Prentiss, but she did have stuff from back in June.”</p>
<p>“His phone’s been out of commission,” Martin said.</p>
<p>Tim rolled his eyes. “Well I’m about to throw mine off a bridge. What do we even say to her? What else is she using to...to spy on us? You know, I bet she’s staking us out with that cop. Searching through every secret we’ve emailed or texted.”</p>
<p>Martin almost jumped out of his skin. “I—I need to go.”</p>
<p>He hurried from the room, too fast for it to stop and comfort him.</p>
<p>“Poor guy,” Tim said. “We should talk to Elias, right? Or HR?”</p>
<p>“But we can’t bring this up without showing them proof of our conversations,” it said. They would know then. About their secret relationship. About everything Martin had told Tim.</p>
<p>Doubtless the Eye already saw. This could be another case of their patron self-devouring, feeding using the watchers. Martin, pathetic as he was, served devotedly, offering his research skills and conducting investigations. He even provided sustenance through his encounters with other entities. He did not deserve to be left cowering from his own god, sick with shame and fear, after all he had given.</p>
<p>Tim nodded. “Right. I’ll look through and see if I can find a page where we weren’t texting about anything personal. But I don’t think waiting to protect our privacy now is safer when she can keep digging into us like this.”</p>
<p>Tim put the print-outs back in the folder with a sigh. It went to search for Martin. Still considerate despite his breakdown, he’d left a note on its desk that he was going to a nearby coffee-shop, signed with a smiley face.</p>
<p>But when it went to the front of the building, there was another matter to attend to instead.</p>
<p>The friends that had brought it to the Institute stood in the atrium, filling the doorway with their bulk. It almost smiled before schooling its expression into non-recognition.</p>
<p>“Package for Jonathan Sims,” said Breekon.</p>
<p>It waved. “Sure, alright.”</p>
<p>Hope pressed a clipboard toward its hands. “Sign here.”</p>
<p>There was a folded note, underneath the clipboard. It signed and pocketed the note, careful to keep the receptionist and staff from noticing.</p>
<p>“Much obliged,” said Breekon.</p>
<p>“Take care,” said Hope.</p>
<p>“Of course,” it said.</p>
<p>Soon Martin returned, clutching a paper coffee cup and with grayish bags under his eyes. It made noises about getting him to sit down and rest up. When he had been placated, it retreated to inspect the delivery.</p>
<p>The note gave a meeting place (the nearby wax museum) and time (noon, two days from now). After being surrounded by watchers for so long, its heart danced at the thought of seeing its friends again.</p>
<p>Inside the package was an archival statement describing the Ancient Hide, a relic it had once tracked down for the Circus of the Other. The Hide hummed with strange music and cloaked worshippers in comfort, crinkling with the thousand names and faces lost beneath the folds. But after it had located the relic, the previous Archivist filched all their treasures before the Unknowing could begin.</p>
<p>The message was clear: time to take back the Hide once more. It had not been back to Artefact Storage since it escaped by taking Jon, and its grip shook the door handle.</p>
<p>As it pushed the door open, it felt a tug down the strings connecting it to the horrible trap. It tried to brush away the cobwebs, avert its gaze, and continue on. But no matter how much it pushed, it could never walk past the table and the beckoning web. The ghosts of its prey were stronger here, their anxieties and triumphs and rage woven together as chains of silk into a smothering net. Beneath the surface, it could feel its true power push up weakly at a touch, like a last gasp.</p>
<p>“That you, Jon?”</p>
<p>It shuddered to hear Martin’s voice. But at least the sparks of Jon’s affection jarred it from its transfixed stillness.</p>
<p>“You scared me,” it muttered.</p>
<p>“Sasha asked me to bring her some new tapes,” he said. He carried a box full of them, with a few recorders scattered on top. “And then I saw you hanging around here and thought…I probably shouldn’t see Sasha right now. I wanted to wait until her meeting with Elias and then leave them outside her office. And you were, uh, staring at a table, I guess. So here we are.”</p>
<p>“Hard not to stare, once this thing pulls you in,” it said.</p>
<p>“That was part of the Graham Folger statement, right?”</p>
<p>“Seems similar.” It could almost taste the cheap paper and ink behind its teeth, from Graham’s fear and mania. “How strange, keeping something that might catch people and destroy them out in the open.”</p>
<p>“I’m way too used to stuff that could kill me just lying around the office,” Martin said.  Then, as if to prove a point, he plopped the box of tapes on the table. It swallowed a hiss of indignation. “Let’s not talk about being stalked or horrible people-eating monsters.”</p>
<p>It grinned. “What would we do for a living then?”</p>
<p>“We could record and investigate stories about, y’know, lovely things. Wonders and mysteries. A granny seeing Jesus in her soup crackers, or someone who’s unnaturally good at baking but not in a scary way, or…”</p>
<p>It laughed.</p>
<p>Martin nudged it with his shoulder. “Well if we spend all our time on horrible terrors we’ll forget how much good there is in the world. Stuff that makes you happy matters, too. Ought to be part of the record, right?”</p>
<p>“Naturally.” It picked up a recorder. Best to use this downtime to gather information. “Statement of Martin Blackwood, about the first time you kissed me.”</p>
<p>Martin groaned. “Come on.”</p>
<p>“The record must be thorough,” it said, trying for Sasha’s inflections.</p>
<p>“You’re really good at impressions, did you know that?”</p>
<p>Of course. “I’m waiting.”</p>
<p>“What, for real?”</p>
<p>“Statement taken direct from subject.”</p>
<p>“Uh, okay.”</p>
<p>There were still so many gaps in Jon’s memories, little details that were usually papered over by its power.  But it was definitely weaker, in this bound form, and that heightened the risk of a momentary lapse. The more Martin told it, the closer they drew together, the easier pretending became. Jon’s love spoke little beyond general adoration. Maintaining a coherent history could make or break its mission.</p>
<p>“So, um, I’d been working in the library section for a few years, and then Elias wanted me as an Archival Assistant. Not really a pay bump, and I liked the library, I liked helping people. I was...really tired, back then, due to family stuff. So I mostly said yes because I didn’t want to tell him no. I knew Tim, a bit, and Sasha and I had done some work together awhile back, but I’d never met you before. Then, when Tim introduced us…”</p>
<p>He petered off and looked hopefully toward it.</p>
<p>It covered up nervousness with bravado. “Now you know that’s not how a statement works.”</p>
<p>Martin blushed. “Just weird to talk about this while you’re here. When we met, I don’t think you were very impressed. But after a few months, when you weren’t so standoffish about spending time with the team, we started properly talking.  And I already had some feelings.”</p>
<p>“And then?”</p>
<p>“Not much changed, for a bit.  But then we started working together on the Rentoul case, with all the boxes and the witch Angela.  We looked for the arrest records and tried to find out what happened to that poor man afterwards. You were always staying late. I kept grabbing food for us and reminding you to sleep. Every new complication was another puzzle to solve together, and dinner with you was really nice, almost like a date. I mean, in my head, mostly. I thought you were straight, or not interested.”</p>
<p>“Obviously not.”</p>
<p>“Right, but I had no idea. We were working around eight on a Friday, about to give up for the night, when I found the contact info for Rentoul’s old landlord. Then you smiled and you grabbed my arms and said, right to my face, ‘I could kiss you.’”</p>
<p>Martin’s voice shook as he tried to imitate the way it talked.  The tone sounded so much like Jon that it wanted to be sick.</p>
<p>“You weren’t serious, you were just happy and proud of me. But I, I basically melted into the floor. I couldn’t say anything back, I kept choking and stuttering, giving away everything. After a bit we wrapped up the work and continued on talking like everything was normal, but you knew now. And I knew you knew. I thought, that’s that, guess I’ll go back to the library or resign or move to another country. I felt like a huge pile of panic in a human body.”</p>
<p>His shoulders were drawing up, even the memory strong enough to summon back nervous worry. It twined its fingers with Martin’s, trying to ground him.</p>
<p>“But you didn’t freak out,” Martin said. “You showed up at my desk at seven in the morning, and you said, ‘I’m sorry for being insensitive yesterday. Can I get you coffee?’ and I said, ‘What, from the kitchen?’ and you said, ‘Not exactly. Martin, can I get coffee with you, somewhere?’ And I knew, in that second. I knew completely. I didn’t even remember how scared I was, anything about HR. I saw your face, and I was sure that we would be together. Not just for coffee, or a date. I don’t know why, I doubt everything, even now, but not then.”</p>
<p>He was smiling so wide his face might crack open, his eyes shining, his voice soft and trembling.</p>
<p><i>I saw your face,</i> he’d said.</p>
<p>But not the face across from him as he spoke so tenderly. Now, he’d hardly be able to pick the real Jon out of a lineup. Still there was this golden moment, living forever in Martin’s memories, an intruder where his lover ought to have been.</p>
<p>It could never go back there, witness with its own eyes Martin’s hope and vindication. Thinking about Jon almost brought Martin to tears, made him happier than any lovely little moment the two had spent together. Martin only looked at it this way because of what he’d built with Jon, and Jon’s emotions gnawed back and pierced its heart. It was an empty vessel, overflowing with waste and bile, ferrying soft touches and smiling looks from the dead to the blind.</p>
<p>Did Martin feel the same as before Jon’s transformation, when he gazed into a different pair of eyes? Or was he searching out the fragments of his loss, pretending as it did? It had no chance to understand, shut up in the domain of its enemy.  Seeking out truths could never sate its hunger.</p>
<p>But there was one way to unearth his secrets.</p>
<p>It grabbed Martin by the waist and hoisted him up, onto the table.</p>
<p>Here was this infuriating, beautiful man, backed against its prison.  It held him down tight as the long low scratches started underneath them. If it took Martin’s face, he’d have nowhere to hide. No more wondering at his memories or second-guessing every touch. All Martin loved and hated and feared was close enough to taste.</p>
<p>“Tape’s still running, you know,” Martin whispered.</p>
<p>He looked up at it, glasses slipping down the bridge of his nose, gray-blue eyes huge and wondering.</p>
<p>With him, the transfer would be different. Every echo would be a welcome insight, not an intrusion.  It could never reject any part of Martin, anything he would give, anything it could claw from his mind.</p>
<p>“I don’t want you to finish the story,” it said, leaning toward him. “I want to make a new one.”</p>
<p>It cradled his face with its fingertips, and pressed their mouths together.</p>
<p>Martin’s stubble scratched against its jaw, his lips cracked with dryness. Their kiss stung the back of its teeth, pulled up tangles of deep-rooted longing from its guts and its lungs and its hands. When it ran its tongue across his lower lip, he opened his mouth, and it tasted the sweetened coffee he preferred.</p>
<p>It gripped Martin’s shirt tightly, breathing in every inch of him, burning with need to seal their remaining distance. Could he hear the pounding on the other side of the table? Did he know how close it was to breaking him open and tearing through every scrap of brightness it could find?</p>
<p>Before, the urge had been simple. To confuse and frighten those who remembered its prey. But it ached to know Martin, down to his softness and bones. After crawling worms and prying eyes had failed to destroy him, it alone deserved to be the last, to become the only creature in the world who understood and cherished his rarity.</p>
<p>But that would mean no more chats and jokes between them, no more presents and cups of tea and running through the rain together. It could only have Martin once.</p>
<p>They parted for a moment and its breath fogged across his glasses as he shyly looked away. In that instant, Jon’s fear stabbed through its chest. This must have been the same dread he felt right before it had taken him. Fear that he, that it, would never see Martin again.</p>
<p>Then the entrance to Artefact Storage opened, and the Archivist stood in the doorway, watching them.</p>
<p>It should never have considered taking Martin.  There was no way to explain Jon’s disappearance without arousing suspicion. Particularly now, when the servants of the Eye had already begun to fear and study each other. Besides, it could not count on no one in the archives recognizing it again, after another transformation.</p>
<p>But that wasn’t why it had stopped.</p>
<p>“Did you find the recorders, Martin?” the Archivist asked.</p>
<p>“Yes, I’ve got them right here, sorry,” he said, shifting off the table and grabbing the box.</p>
<p>It slid the recorder they’d been playing around with into its back pocket.</p>
<p>“Can I talk to you for a minute?” she asked.</p>
<p>Martin nodded.</p>
<p>“I’ll clear out,” it said.</p>
<p>But even after walking down the hallway, it could still close its eyes and hook its fingers onto the silver strings binding its hands. It followed the spooling silk back to the table, and watched from there. The view was hazy, looking up at them both through layers of dust, but their voices came through clear enough.</p>
<p>The Archivist was advancing on Martin, who gripped the edge of its prison to steady himself. She held a recorder out, brandishing the black box like a scale of justice. </p>
<p>“You shouldn’t be in here,” she said.</p>
<p>“What? Why?”</p>
<p>“I’m much more familiar with the items we manage than you are, so if I say you shouldn’t spend time in storage unless I tell you, you listen.”</p>
<p>He nodded. “Okay, but that wasn’t a rule before.”</p>
<p>“Prentiss attacked the archives and there’s an investigation into Gertrude’s murder. Rules have to be different, now. You can’t keep hiding things from me and sneaking around and expect me to look the other way.”</p>
<p>His voice rose. “I’m not—”</p>
<p>“All you do here is lie, Martin. For Chrissakes, I’ve seen your CV. Now tell me what you and Jon were doing and don’t try to give me some excuse.”</p>
<p>“You...you knew?” Martin took great gulping breaths. “You’re going to fire me?”</p>
<p>The Archivist’s expression softened. “Honestly, I don’t want to. You’re a good researcher, and your work is what matters. So tell me the truth and everything stays between us.”</p>
<p>Martin turned away, every muscle drawn tight. “Okay, okay. I don’t have any of the degrees I wrote about, or the work experience. I dropped out of school because I needed the money, um, for my mum. I was seventeen when Elias hired me, so I guess that’s another lie, about my age. But that’s all.”</p>
<p>“And Jon?”</p>
<p>“Jon and I are...we’re together. Have been for awhile. Please, please, you can’t tell him you know. He’s so prickly about personal stuff, and I need him to trust me, to feel safe with me, more than anything else right now.”</p>
<p>The Archivist raised her hand, then sighed deeply. “Alright. I won’t bring this to him. But you should be careful. We’ve both read statements about people who let their feelings blind them.”</p>
<p>“That’s not what we’re doing. And you need to talk to Tim.”</p>
<p>“Fine,” the Archivist said, venom in her tone.</p>
<p>It crept away before they could look down the hall and suspect it was listening. Instead of falling victim to emotion, it had protected its mission and spared Martin. Now it truly knew how deep Martin’s trust ran. They had kissed like lovers, and he had proved he would defend their bond from any questions.</p>
<p>It must avoid becoming overconfident. Martin wasn’t ready yet, still rattled from the Archivist’s suspicion. And they had nothing but time.</p>
<p>Soon, though, after it learned more about the mission during its upcoming meeting. It would show him the statement Breekon and Hope delivered and claim that the Archivist needed them to investigate. Martin could go past the table, search Artefact Storage, and find the Ancient Hide. It loved him so much, thinking of their triumph. Its own beautiful blindfolded watcher, obedient and unsuspecting, would be the one to help cloak the world in glory.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A few days later, it picked its way through a maze of colorful banners and chattering tourists to the red-lit entrance of Madame Tussauds.  The wax impressions stood under swiveling spotlights and flashing fake cameras, backdropped by a photo-printed tarp representing paparazzi.</p><p>An army of still-lifes, posed and ready. It envied their empty heads, their moldable forms, able to be melted down and forged anew with no past presence clinging. This was their home, their place to siphon and store the unease that leaked from every visitor.</p><p>The humans walking among the wax told themselves that they would never be closer to their idols. They cozied up to cold stiff surfaces, took picture after picture with these shallow facades, and pretended they were not afraid. The statues smiled with them, and it could not help but smile too, breathing in air thick with dread and devotion.</p><p>It stalked through red carpets and movie moments, under the vacant eyes of sports stars and royal portraits. Soon it came upon a larger room that hosted projected music videos as rows of disco balls twirled above. Shiny figures patterned after pop stars crouched with guitars and smiled for fans and raised microphones to their ruby lips.</p><p>It knew to go behind the dark curtain, and through the maintenance door.  It followed the message that Breekon and Hope had left, and the trail of its god.</p><p>The door opened into a brightly lit room made of plywood, with no colorful backdrop or elaborate costuming. Twelve figures sat around a stately walnut dining table, paused in the act of eating. Elvis Presley passed an invisible dish to Princess Diana, and Brad Pitt was deep in conversation with King Charles. They all wore bland white smocks. Though their hands and wrists were detailed with texture and color, arms and legs devolved into smooth white surfaces. These must be the rejects, marred by fingerprints on their faces and sunken eyes and melted mouths.</p><p>The one exception was a perfect likeness of Muhammad Ali, in jeans and a t-shirt rather than a boxing robe.</p><p>“Hello Jon,” said Muhammad Ali, and he began to peel his face away.</p><p>He gouged chunk after chunk of wax from beneath his eyes and nose. Crumbles of skin and hair rained down onto the table, littering the empty dining tableau.</p><p>The creature waiting underneath had a bland, kind face. When it stood up, the nametag on its shirt read “Tom”.</p><p>“Hello Tom,” it said.</p><p>Tom winked. “Glad to see you received your delivery. The orders we sent are from Nikola Orsinov. Do the watchers suspect your presence? Will you be able to find the Ancient Hide?”</p><p>“None have maintained memories of Jonathan Sims. They do not even know about their Eye, much less our Stranger. I cannot move freely while the Mother of Puppets controls my true form. But I have a plan, and a watcher that will do as I ask.”</p><p>“A watcher loyal to you?”</p><p>It produced the tape. “Listen.”</p><p>Tom did not stop laughing until the recording was over. “What luck you have.”</p><p>“He’s perfect, isn’t he? After the Unknowing, I want to be the one to decide his fate.”</p><p>Tom’s vacant stare turned cold in an instant. “What?”</p><p>“I thought he might look nice as—”</p><p>“The Unknowing is not another petty grab at power. Nikola said you’d been around long enough to remember the broken rites of Fairchild and Lukas and Magnus. Foolish, grasping men clinging to old names and delusions of divinity.”</p><p>It had never ended up close enough to the servants of other fears to witness a ritual, but it nodded. “I’ve heard of them, at least.”</p><p>“Once the manifestation is complete, the Stranger won’t need avatars. Any part of the power we channel will return to our source. You and I will finally be free of names and faces. Why would you even want a role in the new world? If you’re helping us just to lord over some stupid human, you’re not worthy of offering anything to the Dance.”</p><p>“That isn’t what I meant.”</p><p>Tom reached out. “I’m sorry. Come, breathe with me, stay here for a moment and recover your strength. You’ve been too long torn from us, Jon. You’ve forgotten what you are.”</p><p>Tom’s hands closed around its shoulders, cold soft wax that pretended at skin, where no emotions lurked and no blood ran beneath. It almost pulled back in revulsion. The emptiness that had once felt like a harmony echoed in its soul.</p><p>Tom was right. It could not shake the chains within, the Web that caught past lives and emotions and left them to rot like entombed insects. Surrounded by creatures wearing masks and stolen skin, it only longed for the agony of feeling Jon’s love in Martin’s arms.</p><p>But it had practiced pretending for eons, and so it took Tom’s comfort. They sat with the broken figures and dined on the misery and fear suffusing the museum of stolen faces. Then they walked out to the exit together, past the gift shop, with its rows of fake awards and fridge magnets.</p><p>“Better?” Tom asked, clasping its hand.</p><p>“Better,” it said, pushing down the gnawing pit in its stomach. Before, it had been proud of their fellowship and honesty, watching the servants of the Eye lie to each other.</p><p>Tom nodded. “Act quickly, for our sake and your own.”</p><p>Back at the Institute, it stewed over this new development. How could it speed up the timeline, without arousing Martin’s suspicions or furthering the Archivist’s paranoia?</p><p>It was still no closer to a solution the next day, when Tim dropped by to warn them about a meeting at two in Elias’s office.</p><p>“We’ve got to try to knock some sense into Sasha,” he said.</p><p>“I just hope she doesn’t start seeing us as the enemy,” Martin said.</p><p>Tim almost growled. “Well too late. I mean, she always pried into private stuff, or talked about conspiracies. What I keep wondering is, has she ever really trusted us? Or were we always just possible factors instead of people to her?”</p><p>It rubbed his shoulder. “I think you made the right call. I’m sure we’ll clear everything up.”</p><p>They filed into the head office together. Sasha was already there, holding a stack of files.</p><p>“I know what this is about,” she said, depositing the files on Elias’s desk and clicking a recorder on.</p><p>“Then let’s all discuss the matter,” Elias said.</p><p>The Archivist smiled, jaw twitching in anger. “Fine. A woman was murdered, in cold blood, in the Institute, and no one wants to talk about what happened. The only leads are the ones I’ve found, on my off time. In an organization that investigates mysteries, the most suspicious activity in decades happened right under our noses. But the moment I use the skills that you usually approve of, the ones that got me this position, I’m the problem.”</p><p>“This isn’t a case,” Tim said. “This is you, choosing to treat us like suspects.”</p><p>“We’re here to support you, Sasha,” Martin said. “Not—”</p><p>“Yes, Martin, let’s talk about your <i>support</i>. You sneak around Artefact Storage at weird times, Tim stole files relating to his personal vendetta, and Jon is meeting up with some man in a wax museum during his lunch break. Does that sound trustworthy to you?”</p><p>“This is about your role as Archivist, and your duties to your subordinates,” Elias said. “I can’t change your paranoia, Sasha, but I can submit this to the disciplinary committee as an official complaint. If you want to seek employment elsewhere...”</p><p>The Archivist reacted to those words as if he’d slapped her. She flinched back, a war behind her eyes. “No, I’m not leaving, I can’t leave. I need to know what happened. I don’t want to think you killed her, but I can’t rule out anyone without proof, and even the police can’t help. All I’m doing is looking for alibis.”</p><p>“That’s semantic bullshit,” Tim said. “You’re better than this.”</p><p>The Archivist shook her head. “If you’d have told me—”</p><p>He advanced on her, throwing an arm out, shielding both Martin and “Jon”. “You don’t have to know everything about everyone to treat us like human beings!”</p><p>“And as a matter of fact I do have evidence,” Elias said. “Which I’ve been trying to give you. The police finished compiling and reviewing security footage around the Archive. This covers the whole week during which Gertrude disappeared. That’s why they aren’t investigating the staff further. We all have alibis now, you included.”</p><p>“Really?” Sasha asked.</p><p>Elias handed her a flash drive. Her fingers tightened around the plastic surface.</p><p>She nodded shakily. “I’ll look this over. Thank you.”</p><p>“You don’t have to worry about us, Sasha,” it said. “Not anymore.”</p><p>As they left Elias’s office, Martin pulled it aside, into the hallway near the break room.</p><p>“I think that went alright, don’t you?” it asked.</p><p>But Martin did not look comforted. He dropped its hand and turned away, fists clenched, staring at the floor.</p><p>It reached toward him, smoothing its fingers over a fading worm scar on his wrist, keeping its tone gentle. “What’s going on?”</p><p>“Who was he?”</p><p>“Who?”</p><p>“The <i>man</i> Sasha saw you meeting with,” Martin said. He almost spat the word. “At the museum. You said you had an errand to run a few days ago and that’s why we couldn’t have lunch—”</p><p>Ah. So it had not escaped suspicion completely, although this was an entirely different kind. “That’s my friend Tom. He left some papers with me the last time we met up, and I was returning them.”</p><p>He pouted his lips out, making it remember being alone together before, the taste of his mouth. “And the last time you met up was...?”</p><p>“Martin!”</p><p>“Look, I know we didn’t talk exact terms and conditions, but I deleted the dating apps from my phone, I haven’t been seeing anyone else. Obviously.”</p><p>That wasn’t entirely true, but he didn’t know. He saw Jon every time he reached back in his memory, every time he smiled at it or touched it. He wasn’t the one with a reason to be jealous.</p><p>“There’s no one other than you,” it said, with total sincerity. It would never want Tom, never want anyone or anything else, like Martin. At least until it took another body.</p><p>“Then tell me about your friends, instead of sneaking around. I promise I’ll do the same. Not that I’ve got much of a social life to speak of. Still, I’d rather have everything out in the open.”</p><p>“Alright, that makes sense.”</p><p>“You’re, um, my boyfriend, right?” Martin tried to affect sternness, but couldn’t help smiling. “That’s what this means?”</p><p>“Of course,” it said, pulling him close. “I’m whatever you need.”</p><p>“Cool,” he said into its shirt, almost laughing. “Wow. When we met, I thought you didn’t even like me, and now we’re boyfriends. This just...never could have happened.”</p><p>“But look at us now,” it said, running a hand through the fine hair at the back of his neck.</p><p>“Sometimes I can’t bear to,” Martin muttered. Then, bolder, “Kiss me?”</p><p>It grabbed his lapels and swooped down to fulfill the request. There, that was the warmth it had been seeking, the surge of devotion and pride that still burned even after all this time. It had once acted like Jon’s love hurt to endure, shied away from Martin’s grasp. But from the beginning, it could never fully convince itself it was feeling pain.</p><p>As they parted, Martin’s fingers ghosted over its lips, tracing the shape of its jaw. His eyes were glassy, lost and wondering. A thudding heartbeat echoed in its ears, drowning out everything but his beauty.</p><p>Now was the time to ask Martin to find the Hide. Keep its promise to Tom and use his devotion to secure its freedom. Every moment they had shared, every shard of closeness it had stitched together into this creature Jon-and-Martin, almost true to life, led to this request.</p><p>What would he do, if it told him the truth? Or something close enough?</p><p>It would say, “I have been trapped by a monster, Martin, and you’re the only one I can trust. Please help me find the artifact that will end this suffering.”</p><p>Martin’s face would crumple with care, and he would follow its instructions. He would be so sure of his quest, so certain that their love would prevail. As the Dance began, he would forget working for the Institute, he would forget being Martin, and he would forget Jon. But he would remember himself as its savior, all the way up until the end of the world.</p><p>It had always delighted to imagine Martin serving the same god. But there was no closeness there, only a broken puppet sprawled on the floor of the Institute, surrounded by cut strings and streamers, a bleeding black void where his gorgeous face had once been.</p><p>After the Unknowing, these memories would wash away like a sandcastle in a flood, under the onslaught of endless power. Tom believed that they both would return to the Stranger. Before, it had desired this communion as humans clung to life and food and shelter.</p><p>But how could it call losing Martin freedom?</p><p>“What?” Martin asked, blinking up at it.</p><p>“Nothing,” it said, then leaned in to whisper. It knew they were being watched, but this was for Martin’s ears alone. “I love you.”</p><p>“Really?” He flushed deeply, burying his face in his hand, fingertips grasping his forehead. “I...I love you too, Jon.” His voice shook. “I, uh, I need to get back to work. Let’s talk more later, okay? Come over to mine, I’ll make you dinner.”</p><p>“Sorry,” it said, carefully wiping the tears from his cheeks. “Not that appropriate for the office, right?”</p><p>“Right,” Martin said, breathing hard. “But I mean, I started everything, so.”</p><p>It loaned him its handkerchief, and he cleaned his face, then pressed the cloth back into its hand.</p><p>After he left, a memory rose up, from before the Prentiss attack.</p><p>Jon had stood beside Martin in the storage room.  He’d watched the other man swallow back tears in front of him.</p><p>“We’re going to be fine,” Jon had told him. He’d been nervous and excited and ashamed, all at once. “Nothing’s weird about this, we won’t stop being friends, no matter what happens.”</p><p>“Yeah, I know,” Martin had said. “But there’s more that could happen now. With the worms, and the guy with the creepy hands, and, just, stay safe, okay? For me?”</p><p>Jon had grimaced as he reached out, but held him close anyway. “For you.”</p><p>Perhaps it should have chosen better, taken Tim instead, or stayed rotting in the table and never tried to interfere. But it shouldn’t care that Jon never kept his promise. Martin was happy enough with it instead. He’d said he loved—</p><p>No. There was no use dwelling on what it could not change.</p><p>It avoided being alone with Martin for the next few days. Maybe that would clear its head, although the possibility that its feelings could lessen from anything but breaking the Web’s bindings seemed vanishingly small by now.</p><p>One morning, it was goofing off with Tim at their desks when a black woman with a side shave haircut appeared at the stairwell.</p><p>Tim leapt up. “Hey, not to be weird, but are you Georgie Barker? From What the Ghost?”</p><p>She smiled, and reached inside her shirt to pull out a small pendant of a ghost icon. “Guilty as charged.”</p><p>They shook hands.</p><p>“What a pleasure, Tim Stoker, big fan. But this is the Archives section, our public library is in the other wing—”</p><p>“I’m actually here to give a statement,” she said. “My friend said you might want to know about what happened to me.”</p><p>“Form or in person?” it asked, already getting the paperwork ready.</p><p>“In person, I guess. Um, does Jon still work here? I’d like to give the statement to him if that’s possible.”</p><p>Tim gestured with his thumb. “Yeah, that’s Jon right there.”</p><p>She looked around, her eyebrows knitting together. “No, Jonathan Sims. Indian bloke, on the shorter side, has thick glasses?”</p><p>“I’m Jonathan Sims,” it said, biting back the rising panic in its gut. “You must be confused.”</p><p>If Georgie could see through the transformation, it should have been able to sense her fear, from the moment she laid eyes on it. But even now, there wasn’t a drop of terror emanating from her mind.</p><p>“That’s not funny. Whatever, just take me to your head archivist. And tell the real Jon that he doesn’t need to resort to pulling pranks with his coworkers if he wants me to leave him alone.”</p><p>“Right, okay, I’ll show you her office,” Tim said.</p><p>He put a hand on Georgie’s shoulder and led her away. Tim glanced back, and there was what it had expected: that burning gaze, an intoxicating cocktail of fear and worry.</p><p>He was looking at it like he’d never seen its face before.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>An hour later, after Georgie had finished giving her statement and left the Institute, the Archivist called it into her office. Tim already sat across from her, looking pale.</p>
<p>The Archivist kept her tone measured and her expression neutral, but her eyes were keen, shining like deep water. She played them the statement and their discussion afterwards.</p>
<p>“Jon isn’t some acquaintance,” Georgie’s tinny voice said from the recorder. “We dated for two years in uni, I <i>know</i> him. And that man wasn’t anything like Jon.”</p>
<p>“Can you show me a photo of you two?” the Archivist asked.</p>
<p>“Sure, there should be a pic from our graduation party on Facebook…” Georgie’s voice trailed off. “Wait, this is...that’s not how the photo looked before.”</p>
<p>“Look, you obviously went through a lot during that time.”</p>
<p>“Trauma or not, I can’t change what I remember.”</p>
<p>“That’s understandable. But Jon’s been a valuable part of my team for years, and I’ve researched his background, uh, thoroughly.”</p>
<p>“Fine. Well, we were close once, but I wasn’t exactly desperate to see him again. I’m not interested in investigating whatever the hell is going on here. My friend Melanie pointed me toward the Institute, and she knows Jon too. I’ll have her contact you.”</p>
<p>“I’d appreciate that,” the Archivist said.</p>
<p>The tape ended. Every eye in the room turned toward it. Tim crossed his arms over his chest and raised his eyebrows, clearly expecting an answer.</p>
<p>“I don’t know what’s wrong with her,” it said, voice small. Should have caught her sooner, but her fearlessness, from listening to the whispers of the End, had kept it from noticing. “We haven’t talked to each other in awhile, but that’s pretty normal for a breakup, not…”</p>
<p>The Archivist nodded. “I believe you. That’s why we’re all here, discussing what happened. I’m not supposed to look into the three of you on my own, remember?”</p>
<p>It let out a sigh it didn’t realize it was holding in. “Oh, okay.”</p>
<p>“So that’s why I’ll let the others guide the process. I’ll speak to Georgie and Melanie, but I’m putting the assistants in charge of the research direction and statement gathering. That’s how we’ve handled other personal encounters, like when Jane Prentiss trapped Tim in his flat.”</p>
<p>“I suppose that’s fair,” Tim said, glaring at it. “Though I’m not sure how we’ll remain impartial this time.”</p>
<p>“I’ll talk to Martin about the situation when he’s back from his stakeout,” the Archivist said. “And Elias, of course.”</p>
<p>It tried to suppress a shudder. The other assistants might be fooled, and the Archivist wasn’t strong enough in the Eye yet to simply Know, but Elias would be another matter. Even the air around him felt heavy with his power. No corner of the world held enough shadow to escape his gaze, if he truly chose to see it.</p>
<p>So this was the end. The watchers would kill its body, and lock up the table somewhere even more secure than Artefact Storage. It would wait forever, wrapped in the chains of two fears, left in the darkness with only Jon’s memories for comfort.</p>
<p>“Thank you, Sasha,” it said.</p>
<p>As soon as it could find an opening, it must flee. Go hide in the wax museum, find the taxidermy shop Nikola used to keep as a base, anywhere that might protect its current form. But the binding always called it back. Even spending weekends far from the Institute sapped its strength. And running right after the accusation would be the surest sign of guilt.</p>
<p>Either way, Martin would know, soon. He would never touch it again, the gentlest brush of his fingers hooking underneath its heart and pulling through its chest. There would be no more lazy dates or stolen kisses. The truth poisoned every drop of care and attention that had come before. He had poured so much of himself into its trick vase, unable to see the holes in the bottom where the light poked through, where the love ran out like water.</p>
<p>Martin never meant to betray Jon, the man that had cherished him until his dying breath. He’d hate it for what it had done to them both, for as long as he lived.</p>
<p>But it would remember Martin for longer than that, ensnared inside the table. Haunted by two sets of memories, it would relive every moment while the years crawled by outside, unable to shed this skin.</p>
<p>It could cry on command, but it did not cry now. The fear and worry buffeting its mind were beginning to wash through, leaving only the surety of its doom. There would be time to mourn, after the end.</p>
<p>Martin came back from his meeting with the Archivist with deep-set worry in his gray-blue eyes. He headed straight to its desk.</p>
<p>“So,” it said.</p>
<p>“Nothing’s ever simple with this job, huh?” Martin pulled out Tim’s chair and sat across from it. “Christ, and I thought I had imposter syndrome. That had to be horrible to hear.”</p>
<p>“You’re not angry at me?” it turned away from him, trying to hide the flare of hope in its expression. “They think that I’m—”</p>
<p>He cupped the back of its neck. “Hey, hey, look at me, everything’s going to be fine. I know who you are.”</p>
<p>It reached behind, intertwining their fingers, old and new emotion surging through. Martin looked so confident, jaw set and gaze focused, as if there could be no doubt in what he saw when they looked at each other. It tried to speak but words felt feeble on its lips.</p>
<p>“You’re sure?”</p>
<p>Martin drew their hands to his lips, kissing its knuckles. “I’m sure,” he said, across the back of its palm. “I won’t let them go after you like this.”</p>
<p>“You don’t have to risk your reputation, too,” it said. Of course, if it were exposed, that would be the least of Martin’s concerns. But the more it pushed back, the more Martin drew near, and it would need him as its defender. Perhaps the Archivist would believe him over Elias. A tendril of hope bloomed in its chest.</p>
<p>“Don’t talk nonsense. I’m not the best researcher here, but I’m ready to help. I’ll be in storage if you need me. There are a couple statements I need to check.”</p>
<p>“Statements about what?”</p>
<p>“You’ll know once I present my case,” Martin said, and flicked it on the chin lightly. “I can’t be seen as too biased.”</p>
<p>“Alright, alright.”</p>
<p>Martin squeezed its hand one last time, then scurried away to his work. It watched him go, cradling the place on its palm where they touched, taking in every last sliver of warmth and memory.</p>
<p>The next week was agonizing. It waited for Elias to visit, to confront the staff with the truth of what dwelt among them. But he was out on board meetings for most of the time. The Archivist said he sent a memo claiming to be “confident in their findings”, but his absence felt less like a lucky break and more like a ticking clock.</p>
<p>Tim recoiled every time they passed each other in the hallway, always ferrying stacks of files. Once, it saw the text print-outs that the Archivist had compiled peeking out of a folder. So much for not treating them like suspects, then.</p>
<p>Martin was a ghostly presence as well. He worked overtime in the storage area, searching out files to collect his evidence, and refused any assistance.</p>
<p>Despite likely being monitored, it still needed to visit the wax museum again. This time, Tom peeled away from a melting Albert Einstein. Tom reported that the preparations for the Unknowing were increasing in speed. Almost all the skins from the choir had been harvested and preserved. It said that the watcher it captured was finishing another mission, and that afterwards, it would have him search out the Hide.</p>
<p>Of course, Tom held no suspicions. What was one falseness, traded for another? Both were holy in their eyes.</p>
<p>It knew better now than to hope that the creatures of the Stranger could protect it. Salvation would come from Martin’s hands, or its own making, or nowhere at all.</p>
<p>The next morning, Martin slipped it a tape, fighting a smile. It grabbed an empty room, a tape player, and headphones.</p>
<p>“Hello, Martin Blackwood recording. I’m putting together another copy of my research, before I go over everything with Sasha later today.”</p>
<p>Even that soft voice in its ears was calming.</p>
<p>“I found eleven statements connected to a face-blind condition, or not recognizing close friends or family. Three mention or allude to the thing that calls itself Michael, and five are focused on what seems like a complete mental disconnect from other people. Only one involves the table with the web fractal, which might point to Jon being...the issue, and not Georgie Barker.”</p>
<p>He took an excited breath in.</p>
<p>“One of the statement-givers, Lorell St. John, gave me a follow-up interview over the phone. She said that her condition, not recognizing other people as alive or dead, faded in and out over the next two years. She said resurgences always started with someone close to her. And, at the end, she admitted that she now understood her roommate was the same person, not a replacement. I’ll include some recordings from our talk later. That’s not important right now.”</p>
<p>His tone turned serious, and the sound of paper shuffling echoed.</p>
<p>“I also got in touch with five mutual friends from Georgie and Jon’s uni days. Georgie actually helped with this, gave me a list to check. They all gave the same physical description of Jon. One had seen him less than a year ago.”</p>
<p>He tapped his hand on what sounded like a table.</p>
<p>“So. I’m not sure that’s enough. I can only hope that Sasha isn’t going to ignore the evidence. She’s been freaking out, but she knows we’re behind her. Jon saved our lives, a few months ago. I only need to get her to wait, until Georgie starts seeing more zombies, or until...”</p>
<p>He cleared his throat.</p>
<p>“Everything will work out,” he said, and there, again, the steely surety in his voice, beautiful beyond comprehension. Martin, the anchor of righteousness, standing by it through the storm. “I’ve been careful. I have citations, and interviews, and data. She will believe me. Okay, um, end recording.”</p>
<p>It breathed out, hid the tape, and returned to its desk. Soon, Martin dropped by with a wink and a summons.</p>
<p>In the Archivist’s office, Melanie King leaned over an old chair, glaring up at it. It slid into the other seat, heart pounding.</p>
<p>“Hey Jon,” she said.</p>
<p>It gave a little wave. “Hi.”</p>
<p>She rolled her eyes. “Yep, that’s him, can I go now? Same weird haircut and everything.”</p>
<p>“You’re sure?” Sasha asked.</p>
<p>“If there’s anyone I know that I’d want replaced by a doppelganger, that would be Jon,” Melanie said. “Uh, no offense. But we never got on properly.”</p>
<p>It winced. “I appreciate the support.”</p>
<p>“So what, you think I’m lying? Did Georgie say there was something wrong with my memories?”</p>
<p>“No, we’re done, I just wanted you to meet him,” the Archivist said.</p>
<p>“We met like five years ago, what’s wrong with you people?” Melanie grabbed its hand. A flash of Jon’s irritation and begrudging respect for her ran through it. “Well, hi again, Jon.”</p>
<p>It shook with a firm grip. “Thank you, Melanie.”</p>
<p>When Melanie left her office, the Archivist turned to him. “Sorry we had to put you through this,” she said. “I appreciate your patience while I compiled the assistants’ research. I can’t put Georgie’s statement down as totally discredited, but…I misjudged the seriousness of the situation. That’s been happening more and more lately, and I’m glad I have you three to keep me on the right track.”</p>
<p>“I’m just happy you’re able to be honest with me,” it said.</p>
<p>“Thank Martin for me, alright?” the Archivist asked. “His defense of your character was certainly...spirited.”</p>
<p>It nodded. “I will.”</p>
<p>Martin was fiddling around with the folders on his desktop when it went to find him. Even the low hum he used when rearranging files was adorable.</p>
<p>It kept its steps careful, leaning down to speak low in his ear.</p>
<p>“My savior.”</p>
<p>Martin’s shoulders jumped, and he pitched forward. “Jesus, don’t.”</p>
<p>“Sorry, sorry,” it said, laughing, then passed him back his tape. “Just talked to Sasha and Melanie. You were right, they believe me. I never could have—”</p>
<p>Martin turned around. “Helping you wasn’t ever in question, so don’t start. You don’t have to be grateful. This is a scary world, and I’ve got your back. I know you would protect me too.”</p>
<p>“I would,” it said, surprising itself with how little the words sounded like lying. “I will.”</p>
<p>Somehow, on the day of the Unknowing, it must find a way to shield Martin from the Stranger. He was too bright, too solid to lose. No one else could have his eyes, his face, his skin. It would keep him, however it could, in wax or glass or taking him itself, cocooned together in the Web as the carnival glittered around their heads. Whatever the cost, Martin’s life was dearer.</p>
<p>Martin fiddled with the sleeve of its jumper. “On a, er, less morbid note, are you still free tonight? For dinner?”</p>
<p>“We had plans?”</p>
<p>“I thought if you still had a job at the end of the day, we should probably celebrate. I bought a kinda nice bottle of wine.”</p>
<p>“Sounds perfect.”</p>
<p>Martin hid a grin beneath his hand. “Right! I’ll pick you up from your desk at five-thirty, and we can take the tube to mine.”</p>
<p>House visits usually had reciprocal gifts, from what it remembered. “But I didn’t get you anything.”</p>
<p>He laughed. “You putting up with my tiny flat is the present.”</p>
<p>“Okay, okay.”</p>
<p>Martin wasn’t joking. His flat apparently had a bedroom, though that looked the size of a broom closet. Every inch was economical: one small couch, a shower stall instead of a bath. A corner served as a dedicated kitchen, blocked off by a newer-looking island with two worn stools, all the eating area that could be afforded.</p>
<p>The bottle of wine, plus scattered dry ingredients, were already clumped on the kitchen counter.</p>
<p>“I don’t cook often since there’s not really room,” he said. “But this is <i>the</i> famous adobo recipe from my Lolo, and you liked the pork at the Vietnamese place we went to, so I thought…”</p>
<p>It took a seat. “I’m sure the meal will be lovely.”</p>
<p>“Sorry the place isn’t…”</p>
<p>“Your flat’s fine,” it said, looking around. “I like the...rainbow dog painting?”</p>
<p>“Oh, um, thanks. Sasha made that for me a while back.” Martin busied himself with taking out the rest of the ingredients from the fridge. “Can you get the record player started?” he asked.</p>
<p>There, tucked in the corner, was a dusty wooden record chest with a handful of sleeves propped up against the legs.</p>
<p>“Really,” it said, almost snorting.</p>
<p>“Just sounds better, I think.” Martin bit his lip, his tan skin beginning to darken in a flush. “The French jazz one.”</p>
<p>“Mm,” it said, and set the record spinning on the turntable. “Romantic nights, hazy Paris days,” it read from the cover. “Curl up with your mon amour—”</p>
<p>“Looks like your French is almost as bad as my taste.”</p>
<p>The needle jumped and the piano started to filter in. Martin wiped his hands on his trousers and wandered over, pulling it close.</p>
<p>They swayed together, listening to a smoky-voiced alto croon heavily accented French, Martin’s head tucked under its chin. It nosed at his dark hair, smelling juniper shampoo, archive dust, and sweat. His body radiated warmth, from every inch pressed together, every glowing memory summoned from beneath its heart.</p>
<p>The horns section started, and it spun Martin out, stumbling a semicircle around the kitchen island. When he stepped back into its orbit, Martin squeezed its hands, softly parting them. A new song began, full of plucked strings and whispers.</p>
<p>“I better start cooking or we’ll dance the whole night,” Martin said.</p>
<p>“I’d be fine with dancing forever.”</p>
<p>“My Lolo would roll over if I didn’t give his adobo proper attention, so best not.”</p>
<p>Any time with Martin, dancing or cooking or buried in research, was equally precious. He obviously wanted to show off, to make the night even more special, prove to it how glad he was that they could still be together. And he didn’t even know half of what they faced.</p>
<p>It smiled. “Let’s get started then.”</p>
<p>He nodded. “Can you grab my apron? Should be on the clean clothes pile in the corner of my bedroom, near the dresser.”</p>
<p>“Of course.”</p>
<p>It meandered down the tiny hallway, and stepped inside the bedroom to fetch the apron.</p>
<p>The furniture had been pushed to one corner, the dresser nearly on top of the small bed frame. The pile of clothes was there, but it couldn’t see anything that looked like an apron. It riffled through methodically, digging up jumpers and jackets, until it reached the end of the pile. Still nothing.</p>
<p>“Are you sure the apron’s with these clothes?” it asked.</p>
<p>As it looked up, it noticed black cloth draped over the small window, with particle boards poking out underneath. It saw a monitoring camera on the nightstand, an unblinking blue and white eye.</p>
<p>The mirror on the closet door reflected Martin’s shadow in the doorway, watching it, his hand grasping the door frame.</p>
<p>“Martin?” it asked, voice shaking.</p>
<p>The door slammed. A horrible metallic scraping resounded, and then another, as lock after lock clicked into place.</p>
<p>It dropped the clothes and ran to the door, trying in vain to turn the knob. From beyond, it could hear strains of French jazz and heavy breathing.</p>
<p>“Martin, calm down, what are you doing?”</p>
<p>“You can stop pretending to be Jon now,” came the reply from behind the locks and reinforcements. There was no emotion in his tone.</p>
<p>“I am Jon, you proved that to everyone! Please, let’s talk this out—”</p>
<p>“I don’t want to talk anymore,” Martin said. “I’m tired of making excuses for you. You’re not even a good liar. And I knew you weren’t him from the start, when you came back to work after Prentiss.”</p>
<p>It snarled and threw itself against the door, but in this weakened state, far from the table that bound it, it could barely budge the wood.</p>
<p>“That’s not going to work, you’re not getting out unless I want you to,” Martin said. Suddenly it recognized his tone from every soft assurance he had given, the careful confidence behind his words. Each had been another step in a plan that was working perfectly. “Now tell me what you did to him.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Martin knew.</p><p>Martin had known.</p><p>From the day it emerged from Artefact Storage, he must have recognized that it was not the real Jon. Every moment together, while it covered up disgust at the feelings clouding its mind, he had been hiding, too. The sweet, thoughtful way he treated it, the dates they’d been on, and every kiss were all another step in his strategy. Martin had waited and waited, to save the man he loved from the thing that wore his life.</p><p>Now, it had the option to give him that hope of seeing Jon again, for long enough to get away. Every half-baked plan from when Georgie had revealed it flashed through its mind. But it felt tired to the bone, from lying to Martin, never noticing the hatred behind his eyes.</p><p>Perhaps there was a chance at escape without bargaining. It inched toward the piled furniture, careful not to make a sound. If it managed to take a leg off the bedframe, it could break the window and get back to the Institute before him.</p><p>The moment it started to creep backward, his fist pounded on the door. “Don’t move,” Martin said. “I can see you on the camera. Trying to get out won’t do any good, there are locks and boards on both sides of the windows and doors. And I know you have...physical needs, because I’ve seen you tired and hungry. I bet you’d still hurt, if I left you to starve here.”</p><p>He was right, but for the wrong reasons. No bolting system or boarded-over windows compared to the Web. Every second away drained a little more energy. Before its body collapsed, it would fall beneath a curtain of silk, into the cold dark.</p><p>“Fine,” it said, kneeling on the scratchy carpet and putting its hands up.</p><p>“You’re...the thing that was inside the table. The creature that replaced Graham Folger.”</p><p>“Yes.” It couldn’t resist a chuckle. “Among others.”</p><p>His voice was simmering low. “Where is Jon?”</p><p>“He’s gone,” it said.</p><p>“<i>No.</i>”</p><p>“He went into Artefact Storage during the Prentiss attack and saw me hiding in the table. I wanted to strike during the chaos, when no one would notice, and he had the bad luck to give me the opportunity. He called for you before I took him.”</p><p>A shaking inhale, almost like a choked-off whimper. Behind the door, Martin must be crying. Even kept here in his trap, it ached to hold him.</p><p>“What’s left of him is with me, now, in memories and echoes.”</p><p>“You took—wait, if you have his memories, why the hell did you think we were dating?”</p><p>“What?” it blinked up at the water-stained ceiling of the bedroom. “I can’t remember everything, and what he left is...blurry. Mostly I have his feelings. What happened?”</p><p>Martin took a deep, hitching sniff. “He rejected me. Like a week before Prentiss attacked us. I said we should grab dinner outside the office sometime, and I said something stupid about reading him my poetry, and he turned me down. He was nicer than I thought he’d be about everything, but he definitely didn’t feel the same way.”</p><p>He spoke between gritted teeth, no doubt in his tone.</p><p>“Then you come in, pretending to be him, you overhear Tim teasing me. And suddenly you’re going along with whatever I say about our ‘relationship’. I thought you were making fun, but you never caught on. So there I was, day after day, of pretending that you—that he would ever want me.”</p><p>“Martin, he loved you. I felt his love, from the beginning.”</p><p>“Stop lying,” he said, more bitter than it had ever heard him.</p><p>“When I touched you all his feelings poured out, more than anything I had experienced before. You were an agony to me. He showed me how beautiful you are, and kind—”</p><p>“Shut up! That won’t work anymore!” his voice cracked. “Is that what you think, ‘Martin’s so desperate, he would listen to anyone that said they cared?’ I was acting, alright? Every time I was vulnerable, you would drop everything to make me feel better. And I had to protect Tim and Sasha and Elias, I couldn’t let you get close to anyone else.”</p><p>It crawled over and leaned its back against the door. The closest they could be, with wood and reinforcements and five locks between them. “None of them could have changed my plans like you did.”</p><p>“Because you love me,” Martin said, the same way he would have said, “Because you’re a monster.”</p><p>“Yes,” it said, tracing its finger up the edge of the door, straining to feel any connection through the cold wood. “Please listen to me. I was sent to the Institute for a reason. Even without my contribution, the Unknowing is upon us.”</p><p>“I don’t know what that is.”</p><p>It wanted to scream. The watchers wandered the world, collecting terror for their master, with their hands firmly over their eyes. Every ignorance that it had counted on to complete its mission was now a stumbling block.</p><p>“I am a thing of fear,” it said. “I am older than men, and for most of history, I walked into any body I chose and scared humans that saw what I was. What sustains me, the power I worship, has many names and faces in this world, by design. The Stranger is the root of falseness and the wearer of skins.”</p><p>“Creepy monster cult, right,” Martin muttered.</p><p>“Not very different from your Institute. The Unknowing is to be a carnival of masks, a once-in-a-lifetime performance that welcomes the Stranger into this world. There are...specialized components involved, and I was sent here to retrieve one. But even without my cooperation, they could find another artifact.”</p><p>“Another way to end the—wait, can you go back to the part about the Magnus Institute? Are we your enemies?”</p><p>This could easily become an interrogation about Beholding, or the other fears, if it gave too much detail for Martin to latch onto. Even standing on the other side of the door, confused and hurt, he remained a watcher through and through.</p><p>So it kept its words careful. “Yes, one set of many.”</p><p>“Why are you telling me about this, then? As a bargain?”</p><p>“If the Unknowing succeeds, no one will be anyone, anymore, ever. I wanted the glory, the colors and the noise and the terror...but that means neither of us would remember who Martin Blackwood was. I refuse to be part of what destroys you. Whatever the cost, I will remain here, in defiance of my god.”</p><p>A faint knocking echoed in the distance.</p><p>“Thank goodness,” Martin said, letting out a huge sigh. “We’ll process all of...that in a second. Tim’s here.”</p><p>His footsteps resounded, then the soft sounds of them chatting as they walked back to the hallway.</p><p>“I have proof,” Martin said. “I found this Polaroid from the party last spring that never changed over.”</p><p>“That’s supposed to be Jon?”</p><p>“Mm-hm.”</p><p>“Looks like what Georgie described, I guess. So you knew too? Even through your ‘don’t accuse my boyfriend’ shit? Just decided we’d be fine sharing the office with this—”</p><p>“I didn’t want any of you to get hurt, I kept a close eye—”</p><p>Tim took a strained breath in. “Jesus, no wonder Sasha’s been out of her mind.”</p><p>“Did you talk to her? My texts weren’t marked as read and she didn’t respond.”</p><p>“Sent me home early, actually, I think she feels guilty about our little witch-hunt.” Tim reached the door, rapped his fist against the wood. “Is the thing in here?”</p><p>“Hello Tim,” it said.</p><p>“Don’t act like we’re friends. Did you kill Gertrude too?”</p><p>“No one would dare attack the Archivist in her seat of power. Not that one, anyway. She was formidable. Besides, if I’d taken her, you would never have found a body.”</p><p>“Right,” Tim said. “But you were going after Sasha.”</p><p>It shook its head. They’d both be watching now, from the blinking camera. “That wasn’t part of my mission.”</p><p>“You were only at the Institute to prepare for the Unknowing, right?” Martin asked, then he turned toward Tim. “Some kind of weird doom ritual that manifests as ‘a carnival of masks’.”</p><p>“A carnival.” Tim’s voice was low.</p><p>“But not anymore,” it said. “Now, I want to stop—”</p><p>“Are you with the Circus of the Other?” Tim asked.</p><p>“They are connected to the same fear I harvest, but I mostly work alone. Nikola, the ringmaster, intends to lead the Dance. If you would listen—”</p><p>“June 2013, were you at the Covent Garden Theatre?”</p><p>It wasn’t much of a hand at dates, but that had been long after the nasty man had imprisoned it. “No.”</p><p>Martin’s voice, the sound of fabric rustling. “Tim, what are you asking about?”</p><p>“Don’t touch me! The circus killed my brother and wore his skin in front of me, and you made us all play happy friends for months.”</p><p>It could <i>hear</i> Martin shaking. “Oh god, I’m sorry.”</p><p>“Sasha was right. We can’t afford trust anymore. But you’re still listening to this thing while it tries on faces.” He leaned up against the door, speaking to it now. “The end of the world? Come on, be honest. You’re trapped, and you want out. You’d say anything to get us in grabbing distance for your creepy takeover.”</p><p>“What I want is to protect Martin,” it said.</p><p>“Case in fucking point.” Tim’s stomping footsteps echoed. “Where do you keep your knives?”</p><p>Martin squawked and thundered after him. “Hold on!”</p><p>Not good. It might be capable of fighting Tim off at full strength in the archives, but every moment here made it weaker.</p><p>It closed its eyes, and searched for the connection to the table. Beneath the shame and fear from losing Martin, it descended deep enough to find spooling webbing. Each thin thread ran into the next. Jon’s love and the haze of his memories, entwined with Graham’s burning paranoia, the remnants of life after life. Sometimes it could barely see the strings, but when they connected, they sprawled out into complete entrapment.</p><p>It was a creature defined by formless fear, feeding its power each time it was recognized as inhuman. The Web had cocooned it in connection and memory. Now it walked through the world trailing the strings of the past, careful not to pull too far away from the table.</p><p>Before, it could feel the tightening grasp of spider-strands, sticky and viscous on its skin, as the trap constrained its true strength. But now, as it looked inside, it watched the edges of that glittering lacework begin to fray and unravel.</p><p>The woman it had first taken after imprisonment was fading. Her fear and the affection she felt from the old man sloughed off until it could almost completely forget her. Then a man who had bumped the table in a back room at a party. His drunken revelry and secret loneliness fell away into nothing.</p><p>Had it been wrong all this while, and the key to escape was actually distance and time? That couldn’t be right, since only a couple hours had passed since they left the Institute.</p><p>“Gotcha,” Tim said, and the footsteps started back again.</p><p>Martin followed, babbling. “Tim, we need to talk to the rest of the team—”</p><p>“We need to kill it before it escapes and wears one of us out of your flat,” Tim said.</p><p>The locks on the door began to click and slide.</p><p>Each time it checked again, an old life was gone, emotions and memories fading from its mind. Carefully, it reached out and focused on Jon. It remembered Martin’s face in the sunlight, their fingers brushing as they passed files, the little snort to his laugh, long nights in research, his careful, beautiful eyes…</p><p>It reached into the last remnants of Jon and pulled, all the way back to the table.</p><p>Looking up from beneath the patterned wood, it saw two prisons at once. Through one vision, the door was rustling as Tim took down Martin’s defenses. In another, dust swam under the dim lights of Artefact Storage. The Archivist glared down, teeth gritted, sweat gleaming on her brow, glasses slipping from her nose. She was raising an axe high.</p><p>Martin screamed. A huge thump echoed behind the door.</p><p>“Get out of my way,” Tim growled.</p><p>Martin was panting. “No.”</p><p>The blade came down, over and over.</p><p>“That thing is working with—”</p><p>“I’m not leaving you behind, I’m not losing anyone else! I spent months protecting you, I was the one who trapped it, and you won’t even listen. So you either go through me or you leave.”</p><p>Splinters flew by, past takings unspooling from its mind. It heard the sickening <i>thunk</i> of steel against wood as the Archivist destroyed its prison.</p><p>“Okay,” Tim said. “Okay.”</p><p>Martin re-did the door locks, clicking and sliding. “Thank you. Alright, let me bring the webcam up again.”</p><p>The table buckled and cracked down the center, two sides collapsing together with a grinding screech. The thread it had clung to, the strength of Jon’s love, unraveled beneath its grip, leaving only darkness.</p><p>“Oh Jesus,” Martin whispered.</p><p>It came to kneeling in Martin’s bedroom, looking down at spindly fingers flopped over elongated legs. It was taller now, eye-level with the top of the doorframe, and as it craned around to see the mirror, its neck twisted over three times.</p><p>It still looked like something that had once never been Jon. The human disguise remained in the colors and shapes pasted over its gray-black, writhing body, pale skin stretched out enough to crack, new dark limbs dangling from the fissures.</p><p>But inside it was empty, so many lives and years suffering washed away. They remained only as old stains in the broken pile of the cobweb-patterned table. It remembered everything, but without the aching pain binding it to its victims.</p><p>Finally whole again.</p><p>“What the fuck is that,” Tim said.</p><p>Its nostrils flared, smelling his fear from behind the door, sickly-sweet and inviting. How weak it had become, cowering at a couple boards and locks, crooning after Martin to trust in Jon’s love. Well, no longer. Now, Martin would see it acting alone, free and flush with life.</p><p>Chuckling, it reached forth an arm. The thin black line skittered across the floor and up onto the dresser, crushing the webcam.</p><p>“Call Sasha, call Sasha,” Martin was muttering.</p><p>“Oh yes, I really should thank her,” it said, sliding another limb beneath the door, weaving through the tiniest crack of light. “She’s the one who freed me. She must have thought breaking the table would destroy me.”</p><p>It popped its head out underneath. Tim stood protectively in front of Martin, knife at the ready. Martin was shaking, staring at the gap under the door, thick brows furrowed and gray-blue eyes wide. It didn’t need Jon’s memories to tell it he was gorgeous.</p><p>It crawled out from under the door and raised up until its head bumped against the ceiling of the hallway, smiling down on them both.</p><p>“But instead I can finally meet you as myself,” it said, opening many sets of arms wide. “Hello, my love. We’ve been hiding from each other for so long, but that’s over. Now there’s no reason to be afraid anymore.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Tim kept the knife out in front, shielding Martin with his body. He tapped on Martin’s shoulder, an unspoken command to run. But Martin dug his fingers into the back of Tim’s arm, staying where he was.</p><p>“Go,” Tim hissed.</p><p>“I’m not leaving you behind,” Martin whispered back. He looked up at it, trembling. “You won’t hurt him, right? Jon was friends with him, too.”</p><p>It craned its neck down closer to them. “Jon’s no longer with me. I was trapped in all his wretched emotions, but your Archivist saw to that.”</p><p>“Super,” Tim said. He gripped the knife tight. A few moments ago, that simple kitchen implement might have posed a threat. Now the sight only provided amusement.</p><p>“Still, I have no reason to attack him. Not when you care so much for his life.” It couldn’t resist snaking a limb across the wall to thumb the back of Martin’s neck, even knowing the revulsion it would be met with. Before, fading behind the bedroom door, it had despaired of ever touching him again.</p><p>“Stop,” Martin said, flinching away and slapping his hand over where it had caressed him.</p><p>“I’m glad I don’t suffer under Jon’s love anymore,” it said. “He was a coward, to break your heart over what you both wanted. His feelings may have begun our connection, but I love you more than he ever could.”</p><p>Martin clutched his neck, eyes shining with anger behind his glasses. “Don’t talk about him like that.”</p><p>“I can’t bring him back, but I promise I’ll keep the world right for you. That’s what he would have wanted. Our Martin, safe and unchanged. And I know just where to find what I need.”</p><p>Nothing stood in its path. The Archivist had made her play, and succeeded only in facilitating its escape. Let her try her power against it now. Merely knowing the truth rarely changed the situation.</p><p>It would have the Ancient Hide, and prevent the Unknowing, and it wouldn’t need to risk Martin to win.</p><p>Tim stepped forward. “If you take Sasha I’ll—”</p><p>“Go on,” it said, smile splitting open what remained of Jon’s face. “Try and catch me.”</p><p>Tim threw his hand out, but it was much faster. It slipped past them, through the living room, and out a crack in the window, crawling down the building.</p><p>In the sticky London night, illuminated by ambient light pollution, it moved from street to street through alleyways and shadows, as a skittering tangle of dark limbs. Even this late there were still drivers and pedestrians, catching movement out of the corner of their eyes. It drank down their unease as it rushed past, heading toward the Institute, following the breadcrumb trail of CCTV cameras and prying eyes.</p><p>For the building’s back exit, stone stairs led into a basement door. It slipped inside, running along the edge of a wall, before it noticed the custodian. He had been focused on cleaning a lift plate, but now he turned around, stared at the dark thin shape in the dim fluorescents.</p><p>His name was Hugh Clarke. He had delivered a thank you note from the cleaning crew, when Elias and the Archivist had sent them a gift basket for their efforts after the Prentiss attack. They had talked for a good ten minutes.</p><p>It could run past Hugh and let him wonder, but there was no reason to hold back. This should be a convenient way to test its strength. Not another taking, since the shell others knew as Jon was more useful than some custodian. Still, it had hungered for real entertainment ever since its imprisonment, and he happened to be in the way.</p><p>It peeled itself from the floor, and curled up onto thin legs.</p><p>Hugh Clarke scrambled back. He didn’t even try to scream.</p><p>It sprang toward him, wrapping limb after limb around his stocky body. Long fingers coiled over his face, covering his mouth and closing his eyes. It squeezed until it could taste his fear at the back of its throat, close enough to climb inside. Anticipation trickled through its veins.</p><p>He was not worthy of total transmutation. It barely had time to savor the pounding heart, the slow trembling spasms against its hold. There would be more opportunities for fun later, and a whole world of people that Martin cared little about to torment.</p><p>It crunched down, limbs piercing through his skin. He screamed then, against its hand, as muscle and bone fell away like wet paper. Blood splashed up the concrete wall and stained the edge of the lift plate he’d been cleaning. His breath hissed out from his back, and his body went limp.</p><p>Oh, but not dead yet. It quivered, intoxicated with the anguish and terror jittering through his mind. Like the first green of spring, new pleasures bloomed from him, and it would dig through the frost until it had seen every color.</p><p>It twisted its limbs back around, found different targets, and threaded back in.</p><p>A whimper escaped his lips, and he squirmed against the piercing black. The ecstasy of his pain flickered through its head as he faded in and out of consciousness.</p><p>The lift bell sounded, and the metal panels split open, revealing another door.</p><p>It dropped what remained of Hugh Clarke on the ground.</p><p>The thing that emerged had been in Jon’s memories. A tall blonde man who occasionally appeared to have corkscrew hands the size of his body. A servant of the Distortion, called Michael.</p><p>“I don’t believe we’ve met,” Michael said, his voice grating and popping. He unfurled his fingers to the floor, as if there were some way they could shake hello.</p><p>“I don’t much like names,” it said, stepping over the bloody pile.</p><p>“Of course, quite understandable. I said I would be friends with Jonathan Sims, though, so I hope that transfers.”</p><p>“Certainly.”</p><p>It knew better than to ask him about any motivations. They were closer than it liked, in their observance and arcana, in their fidelity to falsehood. Even if it could get Michael to believe it wanted to stop the Unknowing, he could choose to attack it for assisting the Eye.</p><p>“Would you like to visit the Archivist?” Michael asked.</p><p>“Where is she?”</p><p>“In the tunnels underneath the Institute, thinking she can’t be Seen. She’s making a new friend.”</p><p>Not Artefact Storage, meaning that Artefact Storage was unguarded. It could refuse his offer, crawl up the building until it found the Ancient Hide, and destroy the relic before she could intervene. But acting against the Stranger might result in its annihilation. Without assurance that the Unknowing would fail, it could not risk that yet. So it must dance to the discordant music of Michael’s plan.</p><p>“Let me make sure I’m presentable first,” it said. A breath out, and it melted inwards, extra length and limbs folding back into the pale facade of Jon. It always had the chance to revert later, if need be.</p><p>The servant of the Distortion laughed like the echo of a laugh, and the door swung open wide.</p><p>From statements it had read as an assistant, it feared becoming lost in twisting corridors, but they stepped out into the grimy tunnels beneath the Institute. “Don’t forget to have some fun with her,” Michael whispered near its ear. When it turned to answer there was only a wall.</p><p>Around the corner, it heard the Archivist’s voice. “Fourteen of them?”</p><p>“I hoped she had left you enough to know that much already,” said another voice. Male, older, reedy.</p><p>Another friend, as Michael had revealed. He’d seemed so gleeful, which meant this would be a complicating factor, or a danger. It stayed very still.</p><p>“These...manifestations of evil, they create the books, the objects of power, the monsters, the places that aren’t there?”</p><p>The man let out a wry snort. “Create might not be the right word. Perhaps these things are merely symptoms, harbingers of fourteen different possible ends. Twenty years after my library fell, and I fear I have only learned to see more clearly what I cannot understand. Gertrude never had that—”</p><p>“Did you kill her?”</p><p>“Of course not, I tried to help her in any way I could. I believe Elias was the one who killed her, though I can’t be sure. She was collecting a specific set of statements beforehand, and I need you to help me recover them from him. They describe an event called the Unknowing, and should be labeled accordingly.”</p><p>“Elias? But I saw the footage, he wasn’t in the building the day she died.”</p><p>“Elias is always within the Archives. They are his place of power.”</p><p>“Because he serves...one of these gods.” The Archivist stopped. Her voice grew cold. “Which means the whole Institute does. I do.”</p><p>“Others call his entity Beholding,” the man said.</p><p>“All my research was for that?” The Archivist began to pace. “I’ve spent the last few weeks investigating everyone on my team, giving what animates this place their secrets. More than I ever showed them. I need to, I need to go delete, I can’t let him find the files—”</p><p>“Wait, Archivist—”</p><p>“When you were the Librarian, you treated your team as collateral damage. I destroyed the table, the thing that said it was Jon. I thought I had taken down our enemy. But I’ve put them in danger without even knowing. I’m not going to waste another minute.”</p><p>She hurried away from it, running through the labyrinth of tunnels. She still thought it was dead. And the man, almost surely Jurgen Leitner from the talk about his library, had never met Jon. He wanted to prevent the Unknowing, too. A friend indeed.</p><p>It rounded the corner.</p><p>“Sasha?” it asked, feigning being out of breath.</p><p>“Who are you?” he asked.</p><p>He was Jurgen Leitner alright. Older, in fine clothes that were now filthy, with a stooped posture and hunted eyes, pale like he hadn’t seen light in years. He stood in a chamber within the tunnels, food wrappers scuttled away in the corners. Behind him was a small pile of books.</p><p>It smiled. “I’m one of her assistants, did she just leave? I heard you talking about the Unknowing. I’ve been researching related statements for her.”</p><p>“Have you,” Leitner said, flint underneath his tone. “What’s your name?”</p><p>“Not sure who the fuck you are, but that’s not Jonathan Sims.”</p><p>On the other end of the tunnel, Tim stepped out from the darkness. He was dragging a rusted pipe behind him.</p><p>“Guess we were faster than you thought,” Tim said. “Martin’s going to find Sasha and tell her everything, so you can drop the disguise.”</p><p>Leitner’s jaw twitched. “The Archivist said she eliminated the Stranger in your midst.” He reached behind him, toward one of the books.</p><p>It moved quickly, a black limb bursting from its side to knock the volume from his grip. “Let’s not be hasty. You want information on the Unknowing? I can do better than ‘some files’. I came here to ensure that the Dance can never begin again.”</p><p>“All I know is I’m not letting you anywhere near Sasha,” Tim said.</p><p>Leitner looked between them, and it watched his mind racing behind those hollow eyes. “That’s a pity,” he said, finally. “Because the Archivist may be our only chance at getting the truth out of that thing, and I can teach her how.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Chapter 9</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It waited outside the Archivist’s office, watching grey-blue daylight glint in the narrow windows.</p>
<p>The door creaked open, and Martin stepped out. His dark hair was mussed and his expression drawn. He blinked erratically in an effort to keep awake.</p>
<p>“They’re ready for you,” he said, covering his yawn with the sleeve of his jumper.</p>
<p>It resisted the urge to pull him close, to slide its fingers through his ruined hair. Although he was adorable this way, he must be exhausted. The sooner this concluded, the better for everyone.</p>
<p>“And they are willing to honor my terms?” it asked.</p>
<p>The Archivist would ask the questions, and it would offer a statement to Beholding as a response. In exchange, after hearing its motives and plans, they would decide whether to give it the Ancient Hide. This way, it could tell them of the Unknowing, and prepare them. They would be ready to continue the work, if destroying the Hide required a mortal price.</p>
<p>Martin nodded. “Tim’s still upset, but Sasha talked some reason into him. Turns out magic truth powers make coming to a consensus a lot easier.”</p>
<p>It did not plan to lie, but the thought of submitting to the Eye’s gaze still itched beneath its skin. “She developed her connection, just like that?”</p>
<p>“After a few horrible hours. We think she’s been able to compel people for awhile now, but Leitner helped her...refine the technique.”</p>
<p>It circled behind him. “This bothers you.”</p>
<p>Martin averted his eyes. “I spent months trying to get the truth from you. I put my life in danger to verify statements. Turns out, I’ve been serving an unspeakable evil that already has the power to tell which ones are ghost stories and which are about its other unspeakable evil buddies! So yeah, consider me <i>bothered</i>.”</p>
<p>“Feeding the fear that sustains you is never a waste. Some gifts are easier to appreciate or understand. Think of the relationship as alike to conduit and source, not master and slave.”</p>
<p>Martin shook his head. “But breaking free is possible, or you wouldn’t say you’re trying to stop the Unknowing.”</p>
<p>“You’ll want to hear the truth from me in there, not out here,” it said. Every time it opened its mouth he looked angrier. It would prove its devotion, but not on this ground.</p>
<p>His frustration at losing the chance to trap it and save his friends must be tangled up with helplessness from learning the true nature of his work. He instinctively distrusted the Stranger more, despite what Beholding had taken from him. No peace could be reached until they were beneath the watchful Eye.</p>
<p>Martin glared at it over his glasses, and opened the door. “Fine.”</p>
<p>It stepped inside, to the tableau of the Archivist at her desk, Tim at one hand and Leitner at the other, blunt instrument and ancient knowledge. The tape recorder was already clicking away. It took a seat. Martin closed the door behind them and lingered near the doorway.</p>
<p>The air smelled like the watchers, cloying and oppressive, drowning out their fear. There was also a hint of the Buried, from the book Leitner kept close to his chest, the one he’d been reaching for before. That must be their contingency plan, to shut it away in the dark again—</p>
<p>No, it had nothing to fear from him. He understood the threat of the Unknowing better than any. After the statement, they would see how utterly their interests aligned. Still, it clenched its hands beneath the desk and kept its gaze on him.</p>
<p>Leitner leaned down and whispered in the Archivist’s ear. “Voice steady.”</p>
<p>“Statement of...” the Archivist paused. “Statement of the entity that claimed to be Jonathan Sims. Recorded direct from subject, November 3rd, 2016. Statement begins.”</p>
<p>It opened its mouth. She stopped it with a stare. Her eyes were deeper than they had been a moment ago, deeper than it had ever seen, black beneath the brown with no hint of light or end. Her steady gaze raked over its skin like the edge of a blade. It had known that the Archivist could peel up every inch of its disguise and dissect what lay beneath with a look, a word. But it had not Known, until then. Even the slight hitch in her breath as she began to talk felt like being pinned down and plucked apart.</p>
<p>“Why did you come to the Magnus Archives?” she asked.</p>
<p>The response rose up like bile in its throat. Words burst from its tongue before it could conceive of how it wanted to answer.</p>
<p>“I was sent by other agents of the Stranger. They delivered the table that bound me. They told me I could aid the Unknowing and prevent your interference. A weaker servant would never have been able to withstand the power here.”</p>
<p>It did not have time to catch its breath, to catalog what she had done. Every thought in its mind unfurled beneath her stare, curled into the magnetic tape.</p>
<p>The next question came fast, reaching inside and hooking in deep. “What details did they tell you about the Unknowing?”</p>
<p>“The Unknowing is our ritual, to unite the creatures of the Stranger and produce a Dance that will unravel identity itself. I was not there for the previous attempt, but I felt how close we came to culmination. For one moment, hundreds of years ago, I almost tasted true holiness.” It could not help but smile. “Of course I let myself be taken here to help them. Humans have done and suffered far worse for the chance at imaginary heavens.”</p>
<p>“So why should we trust you?” Tim asked.</p>
<p>The Archivist glared at him. “Don’t answer him,” she said. “<i>Listen to me</i>. You have lied about everything. What changed that made you want to prevent this...life’s purpose?”</p>
<p>“Martin,” it said, even his name burning its tongue. “My attachment to him began as an effect of my binding, but you have freed me and I feel no different. I have—told him, told you, so many times, so what truth is left unsaid to claw away from me? He is kind and strong and clever. His presence gives me joy. I know if the Unknowing succeeded I would no longer care, since I wouldn’t be able to recognize him. But the approach of that loss is intolerable, beyond all I have suffered before. So I must fight.”</p>
<p>Although it had given the Archivist control over its story, she held no power over its movement. It looked back at Martin, desperate to see his face, now that he had no choice but to believe. But he had turned away.</p>
<p>“How do you plan to destroy the relic?”</p>
<p>It wrenched its gaze back to the Archivist, breathing hard from the invasion. “Breekon and Hope sent me instructions to find the Ancient Hide. The previous Archivist secreted the Hide away, but she could not have nullified its power. The Hide can only be harmed while being worn, and cannot be worn without doing immense damage to the wearer.”</p>
<p>“She claimed she almost destroyed that thing,” Leitner said.</p>
<p>Now this was new. It leaned forward, almost forgetting to be wary. “Oh?”</p>
<p>“Gertrude didn’t work with assistants by then, but she had other ways of testing out her theories. She hinted at getting very close after using multiple, well, victims. Funnily enough, she didn’t seem to know the number herself.”</p>
<p>It was about to reply, but the Archivist cut it off again, maintaining the compulsion. “What do you know about the powers this thing contains?”</p>
<p>“The Hide primarily takes faces,” it said. “Not to change them physically, but to hoard their meanings inside the folds of preserved skin. Wear the Hide for a moment, and you can no longer recognize yourself in the mirror. Others will forget how you looked, and you will forget who you once were. But I have no identity to lose. I have worn the Hide before, during gatherings with other worshippers. I listened to the whispers of the lost and drew sustenance for hours. More than enough time.”</p>
<p>“Then why do you need our help?”</p>
<p>It shuddered. “I cannot predict whether I will survive. The relic’s power won’t hurt me, but acting against the Stranger might. I am not a human toying with powers beyond their control. This is everything I have ever been. The moment I prove my new loyalties, I might not <i>be</i>.”</p>
<p>Behind it, Martin let out a wounded noise.</p>
<p>The Archivist stood up, looking over at him. “Are you alright?” she asked. Her words still rang with power.</p>
<p>Without hesitating, Martin replied. “Yes, I’m relieved.”</p>
<p>She clasped her hand over her mouth, and his face contorted in shame. He backed up against the door, hand shaking as he tried to grasp the handle, to bolt. Behind the desk, Leitner thumbed at the book, and Tim froze up completely.</p>
<p>They thought this would be enough to break their alliance, to alter its mission. If it had shunned Martin’s true feelings, it would have abandoned him the moment he locked it in his bedroom, when it realized he’d said “I love you” only to lure it into his trap.</p>
<p>It shrugged. “Calm down. I’m well aware you want me dead. Nothing has changed.”</p>
<p>Martin shook his head. “Great,” he said, acid in his voice. “Glad we cleared the air.”</p>
<p>“Right, okay,” the Archivist said. She shuffled the papers in front of her, hands trembling. When she spoke again, her voice barely had to press to break the surface, she was already so deep inside. “Who were you meeting with at the wax museum?”</p>
<p>On and on they went, question after question, every syllable another sliver of its secrets. It had asked for this. But the truth still stung behind its teeth like sugar and cold. As they talked, the innate part of it that fought the invasion crumbled beneath her onslaught. Maybe this was when Beholding granted a kind of relief, until you almost wanted to keep explaining, to grasp the scalpel yourself, to pour out until nothing remained. But it still ached, twitching weakly beneath her power, throat hoarse and head throbbing.</p>
<p>The compulsion should end when her questions did, but that was the dread, building in the back of its mind. Most statement givers had a story or two, likely focused on one fear that had targeted them. The process was so quick, so close to getting caught up in reminiscence, that they probably never noticed how their minds had been plucked open. But it had spent countless years taking endless lives, terrifying eons of humans. If the Archivist hungered to know everything the way her god did, there might not be an end.</p>
<p>Thankfully, she kept her questions focused on its mission, Martin, the table, and the Unknowing. It had never been so grateful for her single-minded pursuit.</p>
<p>Still, it was close to begging her to stop when someone knocked on the door.</p>
<p>“Statement ends,” the Archivist muttered. Even that sent it sprawling back in the chair, fraying apart. It had to concentrate every last ounce of energy to maintain its appearance.</p>
<p>“I noticed the lights were on down here,” Elias said behind the door.</p>
<p>“Just finished interviewing our changeling coworker, boss,” Tim said. He stomped up to the front of the office, dragging the pipe behind him. “Tell me, when was the end of the world supposed to come up in employee orientation? Before or after the terms of our enslavement to the Evil Eye?”</p>
<p>Martin attempted to stop him, but only managed to flail out, even his movements weary. “Tim, don’t open the—for Chrissake.”</p>
<p>Tim pushed the door open, blocking Elias with his body, posture curled to strike. Elias looked over his shoulder, and his eyes fixed onto it with barely-disguised hatred.</p>
<p>“This is what I was afraid of,” he said. “Researchers see a miniscule fraction of the underlying system, and assume they understand the big picture. I thought you would be more cautious, but the moment you had a real encounter, you abandoned verification and acted on instinct like the rest. I have seen so many good people die. I wanted to protect you.”</p>
<p>“That wasn’t Gertrude’s story,” the Archivist said.</p>
<p>“Gertrude was—”</p>
<p>“You might as well come on in and have a seat,” the Archivist said, over Leitner’s worried stammering and Martin’s glare.</p>
<p>“Really?” Elias asked, but he stepped inside when Tim gave him berth all the same. “All right.” He unbuttoned his suit jacket and sat beside it. “I need you to listen, if I’m going to make my case. I know you’re predisposed to distrust, Sasha, but just this once, you cannot let your bias override your judgement. The safety of everyone here depends on this.”</p>
<p>The Archivist smiled. “I’m not going to lie to you. Leitner told me what you are, so I assume you’re inside my head right now. Let’s stop pretending. You would never have told us what was really going on. Not as long as your master could devour our fear.”</p>
<p>“That’s not true. I was revealing parts of the puzzle based on the strength of your abilities. What happened tonight has compromised...everything. The Unknowing is not even close to ready yet. As the date approached, I would have helped you understand. But you are on a precipice.” He turned to Leitner. “You had no way to know, of course, given that Gertrude cut off her development before she could truly prevent the Unknowing.”</p>
<p>“What happened to her?” Leitner asked.</p>
<p>Elias shook his head. “I know you won’t believe a thing I say. The important consideration is what will happen to Sasha if she continues down this path.”</p>
<p>“I’m fine,” the Archivist said. “I feel…”</p>
<p>“Rejuvenated? Of course you do. You’ll learn the cost of tearing statements from the unwilling before long. But I cannot afford to wait until then. Here is my word of caution: you are the Archivist, but I am the Director of the Institute. Whatever plan you’re concocting, don’t assume you’ll be able to use these abilities without my dispensation. I want to help, and no matter what you may believe, I think you’re our best chance against the Unknowing.”</p>
<p>The Archivist stood up, glaring down at him with those black all-knowing eyes. “I think you killed her. I think if I listen to you and keep you in my counsel you’ll kill me before long. I wish I could rip the truth from your mouth, but I don’t need magic powers to know you’re a lunatic. You’d be on me right now, wouldn’t you? But you can’t take down me and Leitner and the thing that was Jon.”</p>
<p>“Archivist—”</p>
<p>She looked around the room. Static crackled underneath her voice. “We’re leaving.”</p>
<p>Leitner stood, one hand on her back, one hand on the tome. He guarded her as they walked toward the door Martin propped open.</p>
<p>“Come on,” Martin said, when he saw the confusion on its face.</p>
<p>So she’d meant all of them. Maybe it would be an accepted part of their group, since it had bared its soul. Maybe she just didn’t want it alone with Elias. Or this could be Martin’s choice, not hers. That possibility lit a quiet fire beneath its ribs. He would allow it to fight beside him, if only to prevent the end of the world.</p>
<p>Whatever the reason, when Martin called, it would always follow.</p>
<p>Martin locked the door behind him, and Elias turned back to watch, making no move to rise. As the door closed, it saw the edges of his lips twitching, the beginnings of an impossible rage or perhaps a satisfied smile.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Chapter 10</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The group rushed out of The Archivist’s office. “Let’s go to the Director’s Suite,” she said as they ran. She spoke next to Leitner. “We need to find the papers you mentioned.”</p>
<p>But when they ran up the stairs to the floor that housed Elias’s office, they saw Tim standing in the corridor. His hands were full, barely able to keep his grip on a huge stack of files.</p>
<p>The Archivist’s face lit up. “Oh, you brilliant man.”</p>
<p>Tim ducked his head and shot back a crooked grin. “Figured he wouldn’t be able to creep on two places at once. I’m not sure this is everything, but—”</p>
<p>“Probably best to go,” Martin said.</p>
<p>“Yep.”</p>
<p>Leitner held up a hand. “Before we cross that barrier, I need your word that you’ll protect me. I haven’t really left the tunnels in a long while, and the last time...didn’t go well.”</p>
<p>“We’re all going to need to protect each other,” the Archivist said. “Look, no one here asked for this. But you and Gertrude were able to help people, to stop these monsters from winning before. Elias was right about one thing. We need to uncover the whole picture. And there’s no one I trust to help me do that more than you two.” She grabbed Tim’s hand, making him shudder and squeeze back tight, then Martin’s. “So Leitner, I have one question. Can you find a way to separate Elias from the Archives?”</p>
<p>He chewed on his lip, then nodded. “Quite possibly.”</p>
<p>“Then we’re with you.”</p>
<p>Tim had the closest flat. The sky was too light for it to scout ahead, so they stuck together, a strange huddle making their way across London.</p>
<p>“What do we call you?” Tim asked while they were walking.</p>
<p>“I thought you didn’t want to work with me,” it said. He’d been the most hostile of the lot, due to his personal history.</p>
<p>“I definitely don’t like the idea, but you proved that you’re just, um, obsessed with Martin, apparently. As long as we have to save the world I’d rather we have a man on the inside. A whatever you are on the inside. We probably can’t keep referring to you as a thing.”</p>
<p>“I would prefer that to a name,” it said. “Since I imagine you no longer want to call me Jon.”</p>
<p>Ahead of them, Martin twitched, but said nothing.</p>
<p>“What about Nobody?” Leitner asked. “A non-name for our infiltrating Odysseus.”</p>
<p>“Don’t give me even that,” it hissed. They would never understand; it could only hold identities it had clawed away from their original owners. Even maintaining the facade they recognized as Jon for this long after being freed itched beneath its paper skin.</p>
<p>“We can’t stay in one place for long,” Leitner said, once they filed into Tim’s flat. “There are a few locations I’ve used that are...not without their dangers, but less accessible to the Beholding.  They’re affiliated with other powers instead.”</p>
<p>Martin shook his head. He’d set up near Tim’s window, peering down at the trees and the traffic, like an animal pacing a cage. “I honestly don’t remember Smirke’s list anymore. This has just been...so much. Besides, if Elias was going to do something, why would he let us escape?”</p>
<p>“He was fine with Gertrude working against him until he wasn’t,” the Archivist said. “Leitner’s right. We can’t let our guard down.”</p>
<p>Tim divided out the files and they started to look them over. The stories and notes were an odd comfort, reading about terrified victims and lives torn apart by the deeds of its kind. It tried not to let any pleasure show in its expression, even though none there would have been surprised. Pathetic, to continue caring about their reactions long after it needed to hide.</p>
<p>But that was the net that still bound them. Not the Web proper, but the rules that frightened humans created, reaching out to each other in the dark. They were more concerned about group cohesion than their own morals. The Archivist had stalked and distrusted Martin, Tim had gone against his wishes at every turn, and he barely knew Leitner. Still he wanted them protected, and so it swallowed down its nature. It did not regret loving him, even now, but oh, what that love would drive it to become. Even if it survived, what would it be then?</p>
<p>Martin passed a file to Leitner. “Is this what you were talking about?”</p>
<p>“Yes, she mentioned a private storage unit for her more dangerous supplies.”</p>
<p>“Let’s finish one quick read-through and head there,” the Archivist said.</p>
<p>By the time they reached Gertrude’s cache, late afternoon was fading to evening. The haze of summer settled sticky over its bones as they stepped out from their cabs. Even without the instructions, it would have recognized which door led to the room. The heady mixture of old fear and smoke beneath rotting wood almost stung to smell.</p>
<p>It went inside first, eyes watering. There was no immediate threat, merely a mess of boxes and papers and eyeless dolls, so it motioned for the others to follow.</p>
<p>Leitner grabbed an empty briefcase and snapped on a pair of gloves. He set about collecting the books she’d scattered around the piles of trash. The rest scanned through loose papers. Earlier, while researching, Martin had given up on tea and inhaled two of Tim’s tiny disgusting energy drink bottles. Now he shook a little as he moved, and kept forgetting not to touch things.</p>
<p>And there were plenty of curiosities to touch. An ivory-framed vanity mirror with huge scratches through the glass. A preserved finger in a small box that stunk of the Vast. A ceramic pomegranate, painted white with gray clouds and a flock of birds flying to the black crown, stained with dried blood. An Afghani war rug depicting grenades and tanks and rows of corpses forming notes of music. A silver card tin with a few spilling from the case, etched on thin sheets of yellowed bone.</p>
<p>“What’s this?” The Archivist asked, pointing to a safe that rattled without being moved.</p>
<p>Leitner laughed. “She used to keep those everywhere. Liked waiting until Elias was spying on her and then carving out the eyes he was using to see. Once he’s made the connection to a photo or a statue, the next time he’s tracking the same place or person, he subconsciously tries to reuse the entry point. Storing them in the dark keeps him from focusing easily, but doesn’t provide true cover. She’d also make necklaces with the remnants, to help her keep track of those she worked with. I had a bracelet she gave me, but after...that was a long time ago. I couldn’t risk Elias knowing where I was.”</p>
<p>“What did you do with the bracelet?” Tim asked.</p>
<p>“Lit the thing on fire,” he said, and knocked the lid off a cardboard box. “Speaking of.”</p>
<p>They peered over to see a line of olive-wrapped demolition blocks.</p>
<p>“That was her solution?” Tim asked. “Just...explosives.”</p>
<p>It shook its head. “She didn’t really understand how to stop the Unknowing. But you have me.”</p>
<p>It took a deep breath and waded into the piles of muck, picking out the feeling of <i>home</i> underneath so much noise.</p>
<p>Even with the mission they had come here to complete, seeing how the previous Archivist had damaged the Ancient Hide made its chest clench in anger. The crinkled gorilla skin, the blue-black color of midnight and softer than velvet, was charred and flaking, huge holes burnt up the back. Only a few clumps of matted hair remained on the edges. But when it lifted the Hide out from debris and sunk its fingers through the folds, whispered echoes still filled its ears. No matter how many humans she had fed to the sacred relic, she could never hope to master the Hide’s power. That was its burden now.</p>
<p>The current Archivist approached from behind and nodded at the remnants of the Hide. She took a lighter from her pocket and offered.</p>
<p>It shuddered at the spiderweb design embossed on the metal. Nothing could induce it to risk suffering the Web again. “You’d better light the flame after I put the skin on.”</p>
<p>Martin looked around. “What? Here?”</p>
<p>“We should act as soon as possible, and this is safer than anywhere else right now,” Leitner said.</p>
<p>It draped the Hide over a pile of boxes. “One moment, then.” It closed its eyes, and steadied its resolve. This had to be done, no matter how much of its own soul tore away in the process. Keep Martin safe. Keep Martin safe.</p>
<p>It had never before feared the End, after thousands of years crawling away giggling, leaving body after body rotting on the ground. The Stranger had given it more than enough joy and time. But the Spider and its own weakness for an indescribable man had pulled it away, through a journey of dangerous discovery. Now here they were, on this final stage, in a dusty storage room. It searched inside for regrets and came up empty.</p>
<p>Without the emotional bleed spilling from Jon’s memories, they were only static images, and finding the right one took longer.  It had never looked for this moment before.</p>
<p>It remembered the world through Jon’s eyes and saw the last day of his life, as he waited for Prentiss’s attack.</p>
<p>Jon and Tim and the Archivist were huddled together, watching sheets of silver worms crawl across glass.</p>
<p>“There he is, oh my god,” Tim said, pointing past the clumps of wriggling shapes. “He can’t see them—”</p>
<p>Jon pounded on the window between the storage unit and the hall. “MARTIN!”</p>
<p>The Archivist jumped up, grabbing his shoulder. “Hey, hey, we’re soundproofed, he won’t…”</p>
<p>Martin was beating at the worms with a stack of files, squishing ten with each swing. Jon yelled for him to leave, to look back. A figure that had once been a woman in a red dress appeared at the end of the hall. Then he devolved to screaming his name, over and over again.</p>
<p>“Fuck this,” Jon said.</p>
<p>Since he had discovered the body of Timothy Hodge crawling with filth, since Michael had saved him, he’d barely slept. He would have given anything to never see the worms again. He knew he was not brave.</p>
<p>But watching Jane Prentiss slithering toward Martin, he made his choice. Left the cocoon of safety, risked becoming a putrid nest, because Martin was worth more.</p>
<p>Now, it would pay Jonathan Sims’s price, one last time. Martin would still be a target to the other fears, from his ties to Beholding, but at least he would have the Archivist and Leitner for protection.</p>
<p>Feeling somehow shy, it drew close to Martin.</p>
<p>“What do you want?” he asked. He did not look sorry, just scared and determined and dead tired. It would forever adore every inch of him, even the anger in his eyes.</p>
<p>“To say goodbye.”</p>
<p>Carefully, it reached out. He let it take his hand, cradled between its own, and raise his palm to its face. It breathed in his warm skin, the smell like old paper, like Beholding, then pressed its lips to the edge of his wrist.</p>
<p>“Thank you,” it said. Had its voice in this form always sounded so hoarse?</p>
<p>Martin pulled back, rubbing over where they had touched. “Let’s finish this.”</p>
<p>He joined Tim and Leitner on the other end of the storage unit. The Archivist knelt and pushed back piles of garbage and notes, until it stood in a bare half-circle with only concrete below. It retrieved the Ancient Hide and raised the fur to its face, taking one more moment of succor from the gentle whispers of lives lost inside. The skin shifted, a peeking eye between one set of folds, the edge of a nose in another, a flash of a dimpled cheek. A greeting, from monster to monster.</p>
<p>It lifted the Hide onto its shoulders. The Archivist caught the corner between her fingers and flicked the lighter on.</p>
<p>Flames crawled from below, eating at the remaining fur and bubbling under dark skin. Heat rose up beneath its fingers as it clutched the Hide close. The pull of the Stranger kindled with the fire. Singeing power wove through its veins, until it choked on the taste of its god, filling its mouth and nose and head.</p>
<p>Before, wearing the Hide in a gathering of fellow acolytes, it had been in its original form, thin skittering angles draped with shadows. This time, the long arms curled up its chest, flames licking their edges. Burnt-down stubs of gray fingers pawed over its neck, grabbing for the face it wore.</p>
<p>They grappled, locked in a golden embrace. The Hide scrunched up its body, arms and legs flailing, trying to escape the fire, and it hunkered close, holding fast to the wrinkled skin, wreathed in flame. The maimed hand tried again, swiping a gash in the center of its chin. Its lips peeled up to reveal the darkness underneath.</p>
<p>Smoke was rising from its shoulders, forming face after face, the victims only it remembered outlined in curling shapes. Graham Folger and Carl Moore and Rose Cooper melted up into the shadows. It could barely hear due to the crackling and sizzling in its ears, but they screamed loud enough, mouths stretched wide in the billowing black.</p>
<p>The remains of both hands were digging into its cheeks now, searing gouges in the false face it wore. Pale skin flaked and sparked, scraps blazing to ashes as they fell away. It sunk to its knees, clutching the Hide hard enough to pierce, melting skin pouring over its fingers.</p>
<p>A chunk including its left eye and hairline fell away, too big to burn immediately. The smoldering remnants hit a stray file, which began to ignite.</p>
<p>“That’s enough!” Tim yelled.</p>
<p>It wanted to protest that they weren’t done yet, the Hide was still fading, it could take the fire. But it no longer had a mouth, except for the howling ghostly faces burning away from its body. So it had no way to stop him when he threw the war rug over its melting form.</p>
<p>Tim leapt down onto it, beating the flames back. Its thoughts swam as it coughed and shuddered. The pinpricks of light beyond the woven rug and the dancing corpse-notes of the Slaughter faded away.</p>
<p>So this was the last, the final gasp of bravery and love before fear reigned. This was how Jon must have felt, as it seized his body and threw him away. Only, it couldn’t seem to remember how he felt, even with the distance of freedom. It couldn’t seem to remember much of him at all.</p>
<p>When it came to again, curled over on the floor, its blackened hands grasped at dust where the Ancient Hide had been. Piled beneath, the war rug still hummed. It unfurled itself from the floor, clutching its head as it rose.</p>
<p>The others huddled in a corner, mostly unscathed except for Tim, who was slightly scorched. They flinched, watching its true form. Martin looked like he was going to be sick. Best to change back, at least appear to be less of a horror. Now if only it could conjure up the shape to change back to.</p>
<p>Leitner was the first to step forward, shaking his head in disbelief. “Incredible. You destroyed an artifact of your entity, and yet you’re still here.”</p>
<p>“Not all here,” it said. “Jon’s memories...the Hide took him from me.”</p>
<p>Martin nodded. Now it could recognize his expression: not revulsion, but despair. “I know. I can’t remember his face, either.”</p>
<p>“I’m so sorry, Martin,” the Archivist said.</p>
<p>Martin sighed, and turned to the door. “Never mind. The rest of you had to deal with that months ago. I guess I couldn’t help being selfish, holding on. We’ve stopped the Unknowing. He would have wanted—” he rubbed at his forehead, as if to scrub away the gaps in his memory. His gray-blue eyes were filled with a quiet emptiness that was somehow worse than tears. “Let’s just leave.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Chapter 11</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The castle didn’t so much rise up out of the hills as keel over onto them, half-sunken and hobbled. The left side was almost entirely rubble, a precarious pile of broken pillars and crumbled towers. Behind the ruins they could see the ghost of formerly beautiful architecture, half-charred rooms leading to husks of hallways. In the remaining parts of the facade, black stone was coated in veins of dead ivy like gray-brown mold.</p>
<p>Yet when it placed a hand on the huge double door reinforced with rusted iron, it felt blazing heat behind the wood. Not the friendly warmth of shelter, but a creeping, consuming incalescence. A warning that passing through the gate would be inviting destruction.</p>
<p>“You know, if you asked me to describe this place, I don’t think the word ‘safe’ comes to mind,” Tim said.</p>
<p>The Archivist pushed him toward the door. “That’s rather the point.”</p>
<p>They had rented a car and followed a set of confusing directions and roads that the GPS didn’t remember to arrive here. At one time, this had been a marvel of Robert Smirke’s design. But the only history books left that would mention this castle were the kind in Leitner’s collection.</p>
<p>Martin trudged up with their bags, groaning and shivering, and dumped the biggest one on the doorstep. He’d slept fitfully in the car, but he still looked exhausted. “Please tell me we’re the only ones here.”</p>
<p>“There aren’t any people left in the castle,” Leitner said.</p>
<p>“I’m a tad bit worried that’s not the same thing.”</p>
<p>Leitner smirked. “Good eye.”</p>
<p>“Perhaps you should go in first,” the Archivist told it.</p>
<p>The group didn’t like having the creature among them, but they were glad to rely on its power when testing out new situations. Emerging unburnt from the tatters of the Ancient Hide had been a suitably impressive show.</p>
<p>It looked normal enough now. Since it had not taken another human, it only had the false Jon’s face to return to. Before they left the storage unit, Tim had shown it a group photo of the archival staff on his phone. The photo was obviously taken before it acquired his body. But the medium was digital, and showed its Jon form standing off to the side, rolling his eyes. With that reference, it had snapped back into the same guise.</p>
<p>Almost as if it had never lost his memories at all. But it kept forgetting what it had forgotten, reaching for a moment with Martin, for the origin of an in-joke with Tim, and stumbling into empty fields that had once been verdant gardens. It had not loved Jon, but it had taken his love on its shoulders, as consuming as the Hide. Being barred from its own spoils was a fitting punishment.</p>
<p>It pressed its palm against the door to the castle. “The Blind and the Blackened Earth have been here.”</p>
<p>“The People’s Church of the Divine Host used this as a base for many years,” Leitner said. “There were rumors they grew some kind of beast inside. Agents of the Desolation discovered the location and suspected they were planning a ritual. They attacked the castle.”</p>
<p>“Something went wrong that night,” the Archivist said. There was no question in her voice. “Both cults ended up too afraid to ever return.”</p>
<p>“What happened?” Martin asked.</p>
<p>She closed her eyes, then hit her forehead lightly with her fist. “I can’t...there’s a block, when I try to See. The room looks like a basement, and the floor is smeared with black...and that’s everything, even that hurts to find—”</p>
<p>Tim steadied her, rubbing her shoulders. “That’s alright. We don’t need to push any further. Leitner’s used this place before, so we’ll just stay out of the lower levels and keep a lookout for any, uh, black smears.”</p>
<p>It shoved the door open and stepped inside.</p>
<p>Immediately every shard of sunlight fled into the cracks between wood beams and stone walls. Even glancing back there was no propped-up door, no waiting group, no brightness left in the world, just a still black stretch of nothing. It breathed out, to no echo. But that suited it fine. It could see the worn shapes of the castle in the dark, the burn marks streaking the walls. When it stepped forward, its shoes kicked up dust and cinders.</p>
<p>“You still there?” Tim called, his voice startlingly close.</p>
<p>“Everything’s fine. Bring a light in.”</p>
<p>They filed in behind it, phones and torches raised high. The beams grabbed only at the scorched sections where the wax worshippers of the Blackened Earth had attacked, failing to illuminate the rest of the hall. This threw jagged white shapes on the walls: a handprint, a blur, the shadow of a hunched-over figure outlined in ash.</p>
<p>“Looks the same,” Leitner said. He flicked his flashlight over the human shape. “Did any of the fear feel recent?”</p>
<p>It shook its head. “No one with power has been here for years.”</p>
<p>“The rooms left intact should still be hospitable, then.” Leitner drew out a crude map, sketched on the back of an empty statement form. The others focused their lights on the paper. “There’s a few bedrooms in this wing. Well, rooms with beds. This place wasn’t originally designed to house anyone.”</p>
<p>“A room with a bed and perfect darkness sounds great,” Martin said. “Can you take watch, Tim?  I feel like I can barely think.”</p>
<p>It raised a hand. “You can all rest—I don’t need to sleep.”</p>
<p>Over the next few days, they settled into a strange rhythm. The humans slept in crumbling rooms and cleaned ash from their bedsheets when they awoke. They were always checking the time and setting blaring phone alarms in the mornings, trying to sync their schedules up against the night without any true light inside the castle.</p>
<p>During what passed for the day, it joined them in pouring over files and notes in a charred and almost-empty library. It helped ferry battery packs between the different research groups. When they retired, it walked the halls, restless and lonely.</p>
<p>Every night, before the hidden dawn, it would slip into Martin’s bedroom, keeping close to the doorway. He would not appreciate these visits if he knew. Thankfully, he was a deep sleeper and never roused.</p>
<p>Without his glasses and the restless anxiety that furrowed his brows during his waking hours, he looked so young, slack jaw and sweet round face. His tan skin was tinted blue in the darkness. He breathed noisily with the occasional snort, flopping his arms around the bed.</p>
<p>It should not have come in, and each night it fought to stay away. It did not want to admit how much it needed him. But every time, the sight of Martin alive, moving even in sleep, made it almost drunk with relief.</p>
<p>On the fourth night the bed was empty.</p>
<p>It found him and Tim waiting on the stairwell leading to the dungeons.</p>
<p>“Couldn’t sleep either, huh?” Tim asked, twinkle in his eyes even as he fought back a yawn.</p>
<p>It peered down the stairs, skin prickling with unease. “What’s going on?”</p>
<p>“Same dream,” Martin said, scratching at the back of his neck. “Two times in a row now…”</p>
<p>Tim nodded. “Leitner said he had one, too. But he’s not sitting here talking himself out of doing something stupid, so I guess wisdom does come with age.”</p>
<p>“If you’re going down there, take me with you,” it said, before it could stop itself. The thought of Martin descending into the darkness, searching for something even the Archivist couldn’t explain, made ice crawl into its chest.</p>
<p>Tim shrugged. “Only if we agree not to split up like characters in a horror movie.”</p>
<p>It took the lead, kicking up dust and grime. Martin padded behind, and Tim brought up the rear, his phone light held aloft. The stairs were almost slick, and the walls they balanced on were sweating wet. On and on they went, past turns and flights not marked on their map, far further down than Leitner had said the basement could be.</p>
<p>They emerged into a wide, low-ceiling chamber with intact marble pillars. The space smelled of foul water, which was condensing on the carved ceiling and puddling at the edges of the room, drip by achingly slow drip. The flash on Tim’s phone caught a radiating pattern on the floor, ash scattered out from the center in a starburst.</p>
<p>“There’s the paint Sasha talked about,” Martin said.</p>
<p>A white plastic bucket sat in the corner. No trace of the streaks she’d babbled about on the floor. Although, given the state of the place and the thick coating of filth, maybe they wouldn’t be able to tell.</p>
<p>Tim went over to investigate the bucket. “Light’s not hitting the surface,” he said.</p>
<p>It reached down and skimmed the plastic edge, fingers tingling as they neared the black inside.</p>
<p>Without warning, Martin turned and walked through the ashes, to the end of the room.</p>
<p>Tim slapped his knees and rose. “Hey, we agreed we weren’t splitting up!”</p>
<p>But Martin didn’t even acknowledge him. He’d stopped in front of the far wall, and the painting that hung there.</p>
<p>The once-gilded frame had been scorched by the fire, reduced to the occasional glinting speck on warped blackened wood. But the seascape inside appeared unburnt. Most of the canvas was taken up by gathering clouds. Winking stars peeked through jagged holes in the gray morass. Below stretched rolling waters, and in the corner a ghostly mast tipped, buffeted by the storm, whispering of lives lost to the deep. Originally, there must have been a white moon, and yellow glimmers over the choppy waves. Now black brushstrokes ran through the center, carefully extinguishing any sense of light or contrast.</p>
<p>It pulled on his arm. “Martin.”</p>
<p>He didn’t even flinch at its touch. He was a statue in front of the painting, eyes dark and lost as the sea.</p>
<p>“Fuck, we shouldn’t have come here,” Tim said. He put his hand up to his face as a blinder, making sure he didn’t look their way.</p>
<p>“Turn the light off.”</p>
<p>Tim shook his head. “We’re in a creepy dungeon where they used to worship darkness. I’ve read too many statements, I know that’s when the monster grabs you.”</p>
<p>“This isn’t an object of the Dark, or they wouldn’t have had to alter the painting with their own materials.” It shook Martin again, to no more effect. “Tim, I promise I’ll protect you both. Turn the light off.”</p>
<p>He touched a button on his phone, and plunged them into darkness.</p>
<p>Immediately, Martin screamed and stumbled out of its grip. It grabbed him by the shoulders and turned him away from the wall, then yelled for Tim again. “On! Lights on!”</p>
<p>Tim was breathing hard. “I can’t see, I can’t...my phone won’t...” after a moment he clicked the light on again and raised his arm up.</p>
<p>Martin’s voice was soft, but he trembled violently under its hands. “Let me go.”</p>
<p>It stepped back, swallowing down the taste of bile. When he’d believed it was in the archives to kill them, they’d held each other so many times, and he’d looked so comforted. It knew that had been a lie. In truth, even saving his life brought only terrified glances. Yet without Jon’s memories, the days of their pretending were the closest thing to Martin’s happiness it could recognize.</p>
<p>The humans kept their gaze away from the wall, and together they walked back up to the main level.</p>
<p>“Which fear was the hypno painting using, if not the Dark?” Tim asked, once they were safely past the stairs.</p>
<p>“Skies are the domain of the Falling Titan,” it said. “Fear of open space and the massive, uncaring void. Oceans are often connected to that as well, although they have other potential influences. But Leitner might know more. I never travelled much by sea.”</p>
<p>Martin shuddered. “I didn’t even try to look away. I mean, I like art, but at museums, I usually just browse for a couple seconds. I saw that sky, and I thought, well that’s beautiful, and then I couldn’t...get out.”</p>
<p>“Was that what you dreamed of?” it asked.</p>
<p>He shook his head. “There wasn’t an ocean or stars in my dream. I can’t see anything because of the smoke, but I know I’m in that basement room. I can hear people screaming, and the floor is crumbling beneath my feet. Then I wake up.”</p>
<p>“Same here,” Tim said. “But tonight, I looked down and there was that fucking black paint, all over the stone, in these weird huge strokes.”</p>
<p>Before the others awoke, they looked through the library for any mentions of art or sigils. But the collection offered little aside from half-burnt astronomy tomes. When the others shuffled in for breakfast, they explained what had happened.</p>
<p>“We can’t get distracted,” the Archivist said. “I’m glad you learned more about what’s kept the cults away from here, but the most important part now is taking on Elias.”</p>
<p>Leitner nodded. “I’ve been thinking. I’m now almost certain that the Laws of the Locksmith, Volume Three, is our best chance. I’ve wielded the Laws before, and achieved incredible results against a rival collector who was sending spies to my library. We could permanently shut him away from the Institute.”</p>
<p>Martin chewed on his lip. “I have a feeling you’re about to say, ‘but, the problem is…’”</p>
<p>“Gertrude’s notes indicate that the volume is in Elias’s personal collection.”</p>
<p>“Great,” Tim said.</p>
<p>“I don’t think he can use the powers in those pages, since they’re connected to the Spiral. Friendly with Beholding, yes, but not necessarily cooperative. Gertrude broke into his house before to take what she needed. He used to hate that, but he didn’t have a way to stop her. Sasha and I can pull this off. But we need to have his gaze completely focused somewhere else to retrieve the book.”</p>
<p>“Let me be the distraction,” Martin said. “Since I’m not ‘the Archivist’, he’s not going to care about anything I’m planning.”</p>
<p>It stood quickly. “I won’t let—”</p>
<p>Martin glared up, anger flashing in his eyes, caught by the torches and phone lights around them. “You can come with, then. Test yourself against him. As long as we he’s not looking at Sasha.”</p>
<p>“You’d definitely be safer together,” Leitner said. “And you can scout out any changes in the Archives.”</p>
<p>It nodded. “Alright. If you’re sure.”</p>
<p>Martin turned to the Archivist. “I’m sure. I have something fun I’d like to try. Could you lend me your lighter?”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Chapter 12</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The next day, the group dropped them off at a tube station. They began to make their way back to the Institute. Martin had a text ready to send once the fun started, to give the Archivist the maximum amount of time.</p>
<p>While the car rumbled from station to station, his right leg kept jumping. It balled its hands up at its sides, fighting not to steady him. His face from that night was imprinted on the back of its eyelids, scream still echoing behind the grinding of the rails.</p>
<p>It should have accepted long ago that no amount of debasement would quiet Martin’s fear. He trusted it now. He’d listened, and let it protect him, to follow him into the seat of the Eye. Many it recalled in cluttered memories had attained less loyalty from actual love.</p>
<p>The Magnus Institute seemed unchanged, a maze of tan and gray with employees humming about like flies. They didn’t need to look for Elias. All they needed to do was empty their desks and find an unoccupied conference room and a source of ignition.</p>
<p>Martin clicked a tape recorder on.</p>
<p>“Is that a good idea?” it asked, crumpling a statement up and then holding the paper over the Archivist’s lighter.</p>
<p>Martin smiled wryly. “Is any of this? I want him to hear.”</p>
<p>The statements burned far easier than the Ancient Hide. They were mere paper, and had no power unless spoken aloud by servants of Beholding.</p>
<p>“I’m starting to understand why the statement givers feel like they need a record,” Martin said. “At any time, someone crazy like you, or these cults, or Elias could be about to end the world, and only we would know. We’ve got to stop them, so I’m trying to help, as much as I can...but I wish I had more time. To make tapes and write poetry, to leave something behind.”</p>
<p>He wouldn’t look its way, staring steadily at the flames, but that was more than he had been willing to say to it in days.</p>
<p>It handed him another stack of files. “Maybe you’re closer to Beholding than you think.”</p>
<p>“I don’t want to be forgotten. I don’t want to forget. Why is that evil?” He threw the burning pages in the rubbish bin and laughed. “Or is what we’re doing here worse?”</p>
<p>Two knocks resounded, and Martin nodded to himself, swiping quickly on his phone to send a text to the others.</p>
<p>“Martin, let me in,” Elias said.</p>
<p>“Mmm, I’m not keen on that.” Martin held his hand out to it. “Another file, please.”</p>
<p>More knocking, and testing the locked door. “What are you doing?”</p>
<p>“Evening the damage,” it said. “Teaching Martin how to act against his god. Tasting a smidge of the Desolation. Take your pick.”</p>
<p>“You still trust that thing more than me?” Elias asked. “One show of taking down an artifact too burnt down to ever be used, and suddenly you’re glad to be locked away with it?”</p>
<p>Martin snatched another statement from its hands. He watched the paper curl away into black with no small amount of glee. “Don’t really have time to chat. Got a big stack to get through.”</p>
<p>Stomping echoed, and then a few minutes later, Elias slid the key into the lock. How fortuitous, that the closest to the Eye needed to physically unlock part of his own stronghold. Perhaps the Archivist would succeed without meeting the resistance they’d worried over.</p>
<p>The door swung open and Elias entered, wearing his customary gray plaid suit, not a hair out of place. His gaze burned like the smoke filling the room.</p>
<p>“I would appreciate a moment to talk,” he said.</p>
<p>Martin wiped ash from his hands and reached for another. “Too bad.”</p>
<p>Elias stepped forward, to the edge of the desk, and yanked the papers away. “I don’t think you’re considering where all this leads. After you’ve had your petty revenges, do you imagine Sasha will be less dedicated to stopping the powers? Or that Tim will ever try to stand up to her again?”</p>
<p>“Am I supposed to be upset about a future fighting beside them? You think I’m just, what, tagging along?”</p>
<p>He shook his head. “You’re not fighting for them, Martin.”</p>
<p>Instead of going for a file, or the lighter, Martin slumped into himself and clutched his hands together.</p>
<p>But Elias didn’t let up. “You’ve been trying to be brave for so long, worried for months over everything it said to you, every moment you were alone. Now that everyone knows, you’re focused on assuaging your guilt, on trying to find new problems that keep your little group together.”</p>
<p>Martin stood up suddenly, the chair thudding to the ground behind him. “My guilt? <i>My</i> guilt? You knew about what happened to Jon! You’re supposed to control the Archives, to have every one of us under your thumb, but you let it in, just like you let Michael in, and Jane Prentiss—”</p>
<p>“But I’m not the one he died for. And I’m not the one currently standing beside the creature that replaced him.”</p>
<p>Martin let out a choked scream of rage and dove across the table for Elias.</p>
<p>Elias reached behind himself, for his back pocket. It suddenly remembered Martin’s description of the previous Archivist’s corpse. He said she’d been shot through with bullet holes.</p>
<p>“No!” it yelled, stabbing out with a thin limb.</p>
<p>The black limb pushed Elias back from Martin, pinning his shoulder to the wall. It shuddered at the taste of Elias’s pain, pure and hot and utterly free of fear.</p>
<p>Blood spread out from beneath his gray suit, but he continued talking, calm as ever. “Anyone would be confused, of course. You don’t even have Jon’s true face to hold onto anymore. But the dreams started before that, didn’t they?”</p>
<p>“Shut up,” Martin said.</p>
<p>“Not surprising, that you’d become this attached. Especially after what you’ve endured. Fear, oh, fear is natural. We’re all born screaming. But devotion? Every person in the world was taught how to love. You’ve had such poor examples, until now. Now, you finally have what you wanted, what you’ve ached for ever since you understood there was a piece missing: someone who truly loves you, no matter how much you neglect them.”</p>
<p>Martin stumbled back, shoulders heaving. His breath hitched, and tears filled his eyes.</p>
<p>It growled and summoned another limb, spearing his other shoulder to the wall. Except Elias wasn’t bleeding any longer. From the hole in his suit, pale skin climbed over the wound, crawling up where its flesh held him tight.</p>
<p>The echoes of his pain still seeped through their connection, but they were fading fast. It pressed through, desperate to wrest him from his body, to take his mouth before he could say another word, anything to stop Martin from crying—</p>
<p>It had barely dipped beneath his skin when its vision went dark. A thousand eyes blinked open, glowing pupils swiveled to scour every point of intrusion. There was so little in him that could still be recognized as human. Just an empty pile of bones and sinew, stitched together by Beholding. No memories, no face, nothing left to steal.</p>
<p>It sprung forward, using its human hands to choke him against the wall. “What are you?”</p>
<p>“Careful now,” Elias gasped. His neck flexed underneath its grip as he reached up, stroking a finger over the sharp end of one of its limbs. “Martin is tied to the Archives. Even if you could harm me, you wouldn’t like what happened to him next.”</p>
<p>It tightened its fingers around his throat. “Liar.”</p>
<p>“You’re welcome to find out.”</p>
<p>Martin’s phone beeped.</p>
<p>“They’re...they’re finished,” Martin said, his voice wet and shaking.</p>
<p>It pulled away from Elias’s body. Shiny new skin chased its black limbs as it withdrew and then sunk back down to repair his shoulders.</p>
<p>Elias stared at Martin, then shook his head. “Laws of the Locksmith, then? That’s what this was for? She’s still asking the wrong questions.”</p>
<p>“You knew we were stalling,” Martin said. “Was that your worship of Beholding? Just...tell my worst secrets, spill my fear like an offering, and you get stronger?”</p>
<p>Elias shrugged. He brushed away a scrap of bloody fabric from one of the holes in his suit. “You let me. And they would have found out eventually. I’m sure the Archivist will discover my weakness as well, if she learns how to look. Working under the Eye has consequences. You’ll adapt. You always do. There’s so much more we could give together, once you stop living in the dark.”</p>
<p>Martin took a breath through gritted teeth, hands clenched into fists. “My pain doesn’t belong to you or Sasha or anyone else. I would never join you.”</p>
<p>“Yet this afternoon, when you stepped into the Institute, you breathed easier than you had in days. Even now you don’t really want to leave.”</p>
<p>“Watch me.”</p>
<p>Martin went around the desk and clicked the tape recorder off. He wrenched the door open, glaring at it to follow. First, it pressed its extra limbs back into its body, restoring the human disguise. Then, keeping Elias in its gaze, it trudged over to join him.</p>
<p>He slammed the door behind them, then slid down, face in his hands. Elias was likely watching this scene as easily as he could with the eyes in his head. But it wasn’t cruel enough to remind him of that.</p>
<p>“Martin?” it asked, offering a hand.</p>
<p>“You must be so happy,” he said, elbows and knees drawing up close. A tear slid down the dark skin of his cheek.</p>
<p>“You’re crying. How could I be happy?”</p>
<p>He looked up, words tumbling out like he’d been compelled. “Because you can finally comfort me again. He told you how I feel, so now you’ll hold me and chase away the ghosts. Isn’t that how the story goes? I’m supposed to be grateful that you’re still here.”</p>
<p>It shook its head. “I’m not looking for your gratitude, I thought I’d made that clear—”</p>
<p>“No, you’re doing all this, always to protect me. Because even your god winning wasn’t worth losing me. But I didn’t get that choice with him. I woke up in the ambulance and you were there.”</p>
<p>It swallowed down more than it could ever say. “I’m sorry.”</p>
<p>His laugh was an unripe thing, bitter and green. “You know, I think you actually might be.”</p>
<p>If it had not taken Jon, who knew how much danger the world would be plunged into? But seeing Martin, his teeth bared and face red and heart open between them, it yearned for a chance to change the past. Maybe Martin would want to die beside his friends, safe in trust if not in truth. Maybe in that world the Unknowing would be a blessing for them both, washing away ancient knowledge and duty.</p>
<p>Pointless, to regret. Even the powers had no ability to staunch and rewind the flow of time, like curling tape around a reel to record over again. But it could not only look forward any longer, if the path that stretched ahead was paved with Martin’s suffering.</p>
<p>Martin rose from the floor, wiping at his puffy eyes. “Here’s what...here’s the plan. I’m going home for awhile. I’ll tell Sasha and Leitner to take the car over to the Institute. If you still want to fight by our side, you can go back with them. Your choice. But I am <i>never</i> going to love you. I wanted you to know.”</p>
<p>Then he turned and left.</p>
<p>The worst part was, it understood how he felt perfectly. Each time their hands brushed, his heart beat faster, and his palms ran with sweat. The warmth of their connection ran through his veins like an electric current, and he hated every moment, every part of him that desired it in any way. It knew, because it had endured the same suffering in the beginning, before it stopped fighting Jon’s feelings and its own.</p>
<p>Once they took down Elias, it should leave. For Martin’s sake. As long as it hung around, wearing the false Jon’s face, he could not bury his love and heal as he deserved to.</p>
<p>It would return to its lives and its service. And if every so often the eyes of a stranger in a crowd followed him, he’d never suspect.</p>
<p>Until Martin was free, though, it had to rejoin the Archive team. So after giving him a head start, it went up back into the lobby to meet the car.</p>
<p>But outside the door to the Institute, another friend was waiting instead.</p>
<p>Tom leaned up against a marble pillar, cigarette between its fingers. “Been looking all over for you, Jon,” it said, smiling placidly as ever.</p>
<p>“Unforeseen complications,” it muttered. “The archival team has decided to act against its master and dragged me—”</p>
<p>Tom waved its hands through the smoke. “Don’t worry about any of that. Your efforts were admirable, but infiltration is no longer necessary. We’ve had a stroke of luck. Nikola was able to retrieve the body of the previous Archivist.”</p>
<p>No wonder Elias had been so assured. He’d always had another card up his sleeve. What a bold move, risking the Unknowing to ensure their group’s destruction.</p>
<p>How he must have gloated after they’d left. He'd taunted Martin with the loss of Jon’s memories and face, after he’d personally rendered their sacrifice pointless.</p>
<p>“The Dance is ready then?” it asked, keeping its tone steady.</p>
<p>“We need a week to prepare the skin,” Tom said. “Then all servants are to gather at the House of Wax museum in Great Yarmouth. I have arranged for Breekon and Hope to retrieve the table binding you so you may join us.”</p>
<p>“That won’t be necessary,” it said. “The table was destroyed in an attack on the Institute. I am as free as you and will gladly attend.”</p>
<p>Tom grinned. “Excellent.”</p>
<p>“Give me time to find a splendid new body for the Dance, and we will see each other soon.”</p>
<p>It stretched out its arm, and shook Tom’s cold, waxy hand.</p>
<p>One week. One week to fix this, before the world fell apart. With no access to the Archives and no better plans beyond a pile of explosives. Elias must be counting on them to confront the puppeteered Gertrude with her own resources. As resilient as it had always been, even it could not survive the firepower they’d need to deploy. He’d be able to take out his rivals and his own disobedient followers in one swoop, without ever dirtying his hands.</p>
<p>Elias thought his gaze was all-encompassing and his schemes infallible.  Any possible option, he had foreseen and countered, leaving no way out.</p>
<p>Except.</p>
<p>Except he didn’t Know what went on in the castle, which was why Leitner had chosen the place as a safehouse.  So he couldn’t have factored in the secret hidden underneath the ruins, the mystery of black paint and fire and the shipwrecked seascape.  Something had happened that night in that basement that scared two cults away from the castle forever, and Elias had no idea.</p>
<p>A long-shot, to be sure.  They had no guarantee the power would even be useful against the Unknowing.  Their team, infused with Beholding, hadn’t uncovered the truth while living there for days.</p>
<p>But the other option meant complete self-sacrifice.  So they had better start to learn.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Chapter 13</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>On the night before the Unknowing, with all their plans determined and nothing left to do but wait, it wandered the burned-out halls of the castle.  When it shadowed the doorway of his room, Martin was already awake.</p>
<p>He sat up against the grand headboard, bare feet curled over worn blankets. He was rubbing the edge of his knit sleeve between his fingers, over and over, the same loop up his palm and down his wrist, like scrubbing away a stain.</p>
<p>Martin glanced up, and through total darkness, looked straight towards it.</p>
<p>It shrunk back against the door. Foolish, to cling to habit on their last night. Of course Martin wasn’t sleeping. He needed quiet, in these dwindling hours. It would see him again in the morning, sit with him in the car, and stand beside him at the House of Wax. But it stole away with every scrap of peace he could find.</p>
<p>“You can come in,” he said. His voice barely rose above a whisper.</p>
<p>It shook its head. “I should go.”</p>
<p>Martin stretched and swung his legs over, to the edge of the bed. “Well, someone told me the world could end tomorrow. We might not get another chance to talk.”</p>
<p>We.</p>
<p>All the hope and ruined plans and the depths of desperation that could fit inside that little word.</p>
<p>“Okay,” it said, and crossed the room to sit beside him.</p>
<p>He pitched forward, resting his elbows against his knees and closing his eyes. His thigh shook, a nervous habit, but he pushed down against the shaking. “I still can’t believe you came back. After Elias, after I said...”</p>
<p>“You were right, though. Martin, I’ve been alive longer than humanity. I’ve been a million people, if not more. And nothing has been like this, until you. I was so caught up that I never considered my worth in your eyes.”</p>
<p>“But feelings don’t work like that.”</p>
<p>“No, what I meant is...the type of man that could want me after what I’ve done, that wouldn’t be you, and you’re what matters. So after tomorrow, if we survive, I can leave. I will. I love you, and I refuse to take anything more from you.”</p>
<p>“And if I asked you to stay?”</p>
<p>“You won’t.”</p>
<p>He inhaled, dry and sharp. “I shouldn’t. God, everything’s gotten that much worse since I started believing you. I’m not sure there’s a line between people and monsters anymore. Sometimes you look at me and I feel sick with fear. I keep hearing Elias talking in my head. I don’t know how to do any of this. I don’t know how to save the world or how to be loved.”</p>
<p>He stared out into the black. For a moment, his eyes seemed as deep as the Archivist’s, summoner and subject together, his words drifting past its ears and slouching into the darkness, crawling toward the careful listener he served.</p>
<p>“And that’s...that’s not a new problem. I always thought I had to earn love, had to be good enough. Like there was something, someone horrible underneath, and every kind word, every gift or smile I could muster added another layer, blocked out more of what was wrong. But that made me fragile, because lies like that, they fall apart. So I had to keep painting on my skin, and I had to make sure no one ever touched me. I thought I would corrode.”</p>
<p>“You’re not hiding,” it said. “I would know—”</p>
<p>“Jon never tried to pretend. Well, he’d act as if he didn’t believe in the supernatural, but he wouldn’t play nice when he didn’t like you. He was a right git, sometimes. Often, even. But the more time we spent together, the more I realized that he saw me, he really…”</p>
<p>It sighed. “I wish I still remembered.”</p>
<p>Martin put his hand down, brushing against the back of its palm. “I still have the Polaroid. I can’t connect to that face. But I keep trying. I want to see him, too.”</p>
<p>He intertwined their fingers, and it froze up, trying not to move, to inscribe this moment into its mind forever. Sitting in the dark on a bed littered with ashes, their whispers disappearing without an echo, nothing seemed real, but this had to be. A silence passed between them, neither forgiveness nor kindness. Maybe humanity, if such a thing could ever be offered. Two hands joined together over one pain.</p>
<p>Martin didn’t say much after that. While he climbed back into bed, it closed the door behind itself, counterfeit heartbeat pounding in its ears.</p>
<p>There were precious few hours left. It would soon face down Nikola and Tom, stand in front of the congregation that had protected and nourished it since time immemorial and fight to prevent their paradise. Most rituals were delicate undertakings, vulnerable to imbalance. But the Unknowing was improvisational and adaptive. Its old friends didn’t truly need the Ancient Hide, or the flayed choir, or Gertrude Robinson’s skin. Their triumph could only be stopped once the pieces were in place and the Dance had already begun.</p>
<p>And when that happened, the Archives team would need its help most of all. How could it control its own actions, as the Stranger drew closer and the danger to Martin increased tenfold? Would it be able to wrest the watchers back from the edge of incomprehension?</p>
<p>Pointless. The plan was the plan, and worrying wouldn’t change a thing. Nothing left to do but to walk the same rounds: the burnt library, the staircase into the basement, the gates with their outlined figures.</p>
<p>It also made sure to check on the other members of the group. Leitner slept soundly. The Archivist had left her room, but that was hardly a new development.</p>
<p>It peeked around the corner and saw her in bed with Tim, her head under his chin. She stared out into the darkness, and he looked toward her, traced her features by touch, unable to see her in the black.</p>
<p>It crept away, trying to ignore the envy burning beneath its skin. Those two had their own complications, and Tim would soon discover that love was not enough to save the Archivist from her destiny. For that kind of transformation, you needed to offer blood and being in return. Instead, it ought to be jealous of the countless humans living in ignorance, waking up to a normal new day. Unaware that each moment not spent memorizing the face of the ones sleeping beside them was a moment wasted.</p>
<p>Emerging into the light the next morning, they split into two groups. Leitner and the Archivist would return to London, with the Laws of the Locksmith in his hands and her power growing by the hour, and take on Elias. Yet even that danger paled compared to what the rest were about to attempt.</p>
<p>“Please stay safe,” Martin said, hugging the Archivist tightly.</p>
<p>When they parted, she wiped at her eyes behind her glasses. “You too.”</p>
<p>Leitner shook their hands, one by one. “After Gertrude vanished, I let my own fear blind me. She would have been ashamed. She never had time for that kind of weakness. I like to think that being around you has made me braver.” He gripped its hand firmly. “Even you, our nameless friend.”</p>
<p>“Thank you for trusting me,” it told him.</p>
<p>They readied the two cars Leitner had rented for them. Right before they parted, the Archivist turned to Tim. She reached up to adjust his collar.</p>
<p>“You’re coming back for me,” she said. Her eyes were filled with fire.</p>
<p>He nodded solemnly. “Yes ma’am.”</p>
<p>It got in the car with Martin and Tim. They peeled out of the huge driveway and past overgrown roads that didn’t exist on any map. No one said a word. They were all too aware who could be listening.</p>
<p>Tim drove them over the river to Great Yarmouth and stopped to park close to Regent Street. Sunbeams reflected off the dinged-up pastel shops. The sea air was laced with the smell of rock factory sweets. Their grim troupe, carrying a sealed plastic bucket and a huge covered canvas, was completely incongruous in the crowd of middle-aged vacationers. They walked down a trail of shoe stores, knockoff purse booths, and takeaway leading to the beaches. Martin bought and devoured a hot dog, something he claimed would “help with the stress”.</p>
<p>Tim made an exaggerated frowning face. “Aw, no time to pop into TicklesWorld Joke Shop?”</p>
<p>Martin dragged him away. “Please no.”</p>
<p>Finally they reached the brown-and-blue scalloped facade for the House of Wax. It turned back to them. “See you soon,” it said. “I’ll be pretending to join…”</p>
<p>Martin nodded. “We know. No matter what happens, stick to the plan.”</p>
<p>“Let’s end this,” Tim said.</p>
<p>It slipped past the boarded-up doors, and entered the darkened rooms of the museum. The cheap backgrounds and scattered waxworks inside made Madame Tussaud’s in London look extravagant in comparison. It passed garishly pale faces that barely resembled their namesakes. They were only recognizable as Mussolini or Margaret Thatcher based on nearby plaques. Figures stood stiffly, arranged to cover up clumped fingers on meaty hands.</p>
<p>But unlike the other museum’s illusory men, real humanity lay buried beneath these ugly visages.</p>
<p>In a time long past they had been Daniel or Sarah or Jessica, until one night, when they had offered a cigarette to a figure in the darkness. Now they no longer had those names, stolen from them along with their skin. So the famous faces pressed down in cold wax, covering what remained of their bones and sinew, would have to do. Their eyes followed it as it moved, and their pain sung through its soul.</p>
<p>Then it reached an impression of a young Prince William, gaze blank beneath spidery eyelashes. Tufts of dark blonde hair sat askew on his thin head, a half-smile on over-dyed pink lips revealing white teeth like gravestones.</p>
<p>When it passed by, Prince William slid from his stand and spread his arms wide.</p>
<p>“Welcome, Jon. I see you haven’t changed for the occasion yet.”</p>
<p>It waved back. “Hello, Tom. I actually thought my watcher suit would be most appropriate, considering our hostess’s costume for tonight.”</p>
<p>Tom smiled, stretching and warping the powdery skin around its petal mouth. “Oh, good choice, sticking to the theme. After all, everyone who isn’t anyone will be there.”</p>
<p>Tom guided it past the hall of curiosities and the busts of tribal caricatures, and past the the Torture Chamber. Blood-splattered killers and a wild-eyed Charles Manson were visible behind cell bars, all dripping with fear. They stopped in front of a central door to the auditorium. The blinking marquee announced that tonight’s one time only performance would be presented by the Circus of the Other. Tom pushed the door open.</p>
<p>Stepping into the auditorium, the air shifted into something sweet and metallic, like licking honey off a knife. The stage had been carved from multiple rooms. Remnants of walls protruded at every side, and rows of chairs meandered down in clusters. The audience was already gathered, each seat occupied by painted mannequins, yellow crash dummies, and sutured medical simulation dolls.</p>
<p>They walked down the main aisle, discussing the preparations. It could barely follow what Tom was saying. The power gathered beneath the glittering lights echoed in its head like thunder.</p>
<p>On stage, the major servants currently working out of England had assembled. It recognized Sarah Baldwin, Daniel Rawlings, Breekon and Hope, the shadowed bulk of the monster that the Archives team called the Anglerfish, and Nikola Orsinov. Behind them, the rest of the waxworks were arranged in rows. Blood seeped from the seams of their starched costumes. The individual tones of their suffering hummed through the auditorium, a splendid choir in holy harmony.</p>
<p>“We’ve been able to fit almost three humans in each sculpture,” Tom said, pointing out the figures.</p>
<p>“Aren’t they lovely?” Nikola Orsinov asked.</p>
<p>Her smooth plastic face had no features, but the way she moved always suggested a gloating smile. She looked like the mannequins lining the audience, save her gaudy red ringmaster costume, but it had met her in many forms. During different eras, she had been an aging clown sewn up into an automaton, a gilded corset stand, and a plain dress dummy, but she was ever the star of the show. There was no question who would be in charge of ushering in the new world. Nikola would cheerfully kill anyone that stood in the way of her glory.</p>
<p>“Though we’ve saved the finest pieces for the Dancer, of course,” she said.</p>
<p>She gave a little twirl, showing off her pale cloak. The collar was topped with a thin line of wrinkled lips, a ring of gray-white hair falling about her shoulders. Two golden buttons sewn over the eye-sockets neutered any power that might have been left. It did not remember meeting Gertrude Robinson, but it did not want to know her like this.</p>
<p>“Magnificent,” it said, swallowing down shame at its own disgust.</p>
<p>From its position, it watched a door on the right-hand side of the stage crack open.</p>
<p>It turned away from the rest, making a “one minute” sign behind its back. They’d agreed not to move until the Dance began, but you could never be too careful.</p>
<p>Breekon and Hope worked at the pulleys. A heavy velvet curtain that smelled like rotten mothballs and old wax dropped in front of the stage.</p>
<p>“Places, everyone,” Nikola announced.</p>
<p>“Thank you, places,” a thousand voices answered.</p>
<p>The floor beneath them lit up with spotlights, and the servants hurried to their cues. It moved without thinking and settled under its light, sweating from the harsh glow. An off-kilter melody rose from the covered orchestra pit, calliope and cornets blending with the moaning of the flayed choir. The drumroll reverberated inside its chest, and the curtain flew open.</p>
<p>Nikola leaned down, white leg rising. She pointed her boot at the ceiling and beckoned the faceless audience with her plastic hand in a graceful penché. The tails of her ringmaster costume flared, and Gertrude’s skin fell over her shoulder like a trailing epaulet.</p>
<p>She pulled herself up into a pirouette as strange music swelled and divinity permeated the auditorium. It could feel the arc of her plastic limbs, a scripture carved over its false heart, as truth became untruth became truth again in a glittering revolution.</p>
<p>Ready.</p>
<p>It brought its hand down. The door banged open. Martin and Tim rushed the stage just as Nikola spun out of her pirouette and announced:</p>
<p>“The show has begun!”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. Chapter 14</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Nikola spread her arms, one after the other. Her skin cloak rippled as she moved into a careful curtsy, bowing before the automaton audience. Beneath their feet, the lilting melody slowed to something both reverent and gleeful. The choir sculptures breathed out a great gasping note.</p>
<p>This was what it had felt, a hundred years past and oceans away. Poetry and power, transforming the Dance from simple movements to a final concord.</p>
<p>When it imagined the Unknowing before, it had expected a shining madness to descend upon them. Yet nothing in the theater changed. Nikola began a graceful pas de bourée, tipping up onto her the toes of her boots. She fluttered across the stage as the spotlights followed her.</p>
<p>But that was its protection. The blessing of the Stranger let it keep its mind in this space where the world was changing beyond recognition. After its signal, Martin and Tim had left their hiding place and headed for the stage. Now, they dropped to the ground like cut marionettes, clutching their heads.</p>
<p>“What’s going on?” Tim yelled. “What’s—who’s—”</p>
<p>He staggered to his feet, head whipping around as he tried desperately to understand his surroundings. He grabbed for the handle of the paint bucket. But when he caught his prize, he stared in bafflement, unable to recognize the white plastic swinging from his hands.</p>
<p>The stage lights spun and Sarah Baldwin moved to his side. She sunk her nails into his shoulders. “Now where do you think you’re going?”</p>
<p>He tried to jerk away, flailing out with the bucket. “Who are you?”</p>
<p>“Why, I’m Danny, of course,” Sarah said, spinning him into the dance. She brought his arm around her waist and fanned her back out, copying Nikola’s far more practiced movements on the center stage.</p>
<p>“No, no,” he muttered. “I have to stop them, I have to save you.”</p>
<p>“But I’m just fine.”</p>
<p>“Tim!” it yelled.</p>
<p>And just as he had believed Sarah Baldwin, he turned at the sound of its voice. Recognition dawned in his eyes as he saw through its reframing of the world.</p>
<p>“That’s...yes, I must be Tim.” He pushed her away. “We’re—we’re supposed to stick to the plan. But I...what was the plan?”</p>
<p>Nikola turned out of an arabesque and stared down at it. “Selfish grasping thing. Still sore that we never needed your help, thought you’d at least contribute more sacrifices? But the Unknowing won’t wait for your little cast. You led them here, you dispose of them.”</p>
<p>It ignored her. “Give me the bucket,” it said to Tim, letting the fear in the air flow through its words.</p>
<p>He shook his head, but when he looked back at it, recognition lit up his gaze. “Right.” He threw the bucket toward it, but missed. The bucket hit the ground and splattered out, pure black paint staining the stage.</p>
<p>Some of the paint hit Martin’s sprawled form. He hissed and turned over, humming the music of the choir to himself as he tried to crawl away.</p>
<p>“Martin!” it called, and left its light and fated position, stumbling to its knees in front of him. “Martin, look at me, please.” It channeled every bit of power it could muster, shaking him by the arms. “Martin, I’m here—”</p>
<p>“I’m Martin?” he asked. He stared up at it, his glasses cracked from the fall, no recognition in his gray-blue eyes. “I’m Martin, you’re…?”</p>
<p>This was not part of the plan. If it had a real name to give, an identity all its own, it would have told him. But there was only one answer he would trust, only one way to keep him safe and sane through the circus ringing around them.</p>
<p>“I’m Jon,” it said. “I’m Jon, I came here for you, Martin, please listen to me.”</p>
<p>Immediately, his confusion melted into a relieved smile. He reached up, brushing the hair from its face. “Oh, thank god, Jon, I was so scared.”</p>
<p>It choked back a sob. Even in the cradle of its nascent god, Martin’s sweaty hand on its cheek felt like the greater benediction. It leaned in and whispered. “Tim is going to give you something, and once he does, you need to run for the wings.”</p>
<p>“Okay,” Martin said.</p>
<p>Nikola cackled. “You’ll never understand, will you? You can’t really think that Jon led you here to prevent the Unknowing. Your friend is gone, and you’ve been following one of our own. It made sure to tell us every detail about the stupid watchers it had scurrying about, dancing to my orders.”</p>
<p>Martin looked up at it, voice trembling. “That’s—Jon wouldn’t—”</p>
<p>“Don’t listen to her. Please, Tim, you have to take her down!”</p>
<p>“You wouldn’t hurt me, would you Tim?” Nikola asked. “I’m—”</p>
<p>Tim laughed like shattered glass. “Shut up! I don’t care who that is, or who you are. I know I can’t bring Danny back. But I’m done standing by. I’m going to hurt <i>all of you<i>.”</i></i></p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>He grunted and dove for Nikola, wrestling her to the ground, thrashing around in the black paint. She fought back with far more strength than her plastic frame suggested. He ripped off her cloak and flung the skin toward Martin, who scrambled to grab onto the grey hair trim. Maybe their current inability to recognize objects was a blessing in disguise. They’d normally have qualms about tossing the remains of their former boss between them.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Go for the wings!” it yelled, and Martin ran.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>It pushed out of the Jon disguise, unfurling to its true height, thin limbs sliding from its torso.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“You may have taken my beautiful costume, but you can’t stop the Dance now that the components have been assembled,” Nikola said. She clawed back at Tim with white gleaming fingers. “Our rebirth is inevitable.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Tim pinned her down and struck her face. There was a wet sound as his knuckles cracked the plastic where her mouth should be and pulled away bleeding. “Fuck you.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“You’re wrong, Nikola,” it said, spreading its arms wide. “I’ll show you.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>A few days ago, armed with flashlights and books of power, the group had descended into the castle’s caverns to show Leitner the painting. He’d been able to resist the thrall for a few moments, long enough to get a good look.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“I can’t say I’ve heard of this object,” Leitner had told them. “But I do know what that is.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>He pointed toward a white scribble in the corner.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>The Archivist’s eyes flashed. “Right, that was on the painting Elias had covered in his study.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>A backwards S on top of an F, both laid on their side, the sigil combined rolling mountains and oceanic depths. The signature of Simon Fairchild.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Think very carefully,” Leitner had said. “Keep your mind open. What was the shape painted on the ground that night?”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>The Archivist had nodded. The air around her had changed, the strength of her vision blurring out the influences of the other fears. “The Church of the Divine Host heard about a painting connected to an abyss. They wanted to corrupt the passage, create a perfect lightless void. But the Desolation attacked too soon. Their fire singed the canvas, and altered the portal permanently. That’s why they ran. They’d already lost too much.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“That’s how we win then,” Martin had said. “We open whatever that is under their feet.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Tim had shook his head. “But we’ll be sucked in too.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“We’ll find a way out ,” Martin had said.  “This is our only choice, unless we want to go back to Gertrude’s stash and blow the museum up.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>The Archivist had shivered. “I don’t think falling into that would be the end. Death might be kinder.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>It had turned to Martin. “No. I won’t let you trade your life like this.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>But instead of grousing at it for over-valuing him again, Martin had nodded, cogs spinning in his mind. “A trade, there’s an idea…”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Now, it stood at center stage, surrounded by pools of unreflecting black paint. It could not see the drop-cloth they had hidden the painting in. But it trusted that the other two had stashed the canvas in the wings before they entered, close enough to activate.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Nikola muscled up from beneath Tim’s grasp. She continued to talk directly to it. “You’re actually trying to stop me? Did the Web break you so completely? Don’t you remember who you belong to?”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>It nodded. “I know. I chose. I’ll take what comes.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Then it sunk to its knees and pushed its arms out, dragging thin black limbs through even darker paint. It spasmed and strained to reach far enough, to span even the dusty corners behind the choir. Carefully, with dozens of makeshift brushes, it drew the sigil across the entire stage.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>The ground beneath them trembled. A million tiny fissures, blacker than night, spread out from the signature. Steam hissed through the cracks in the worn wooden floorboards.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“What have you done?” Nikola shrieked.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Tim smiled and pinned her by her shoulders. “Too late.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“No no no no no!”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Her white hands shot out and clamped around his neck. She threw herself over him, bashing his head into the collapsing floor. He howled in pain, and she shoved him down again. By that time the center of the stage had begun to collapse, and she was forced to let go.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Get up!” it yelled. But Tim could only blink and twitch in response, his ragged body sliding toward the crumbling center.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>It looped a few limbs, covered in black paint, under him, and lifted his prone form. It coiled him close as it rushed toward the wings, where Martin was waiting.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Soon they wouldn’t even have that safe ground. The floor burned beneath its feet, gouts of flame reaching up through the broken stage. Smoke choked the air. In the middle, where the backwards S joined the F at one black point, the floorboards had already given way, revealing the inferno below.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>It ran backstage, to Martin’s side, just in time to see a door creak open between two curtains.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Did you bring me my present?” Michael asked, clapping his grotesque branching hands together.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>“Here,” Martin said, and thrust Gertrude’s skin into his arms.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>It pulled its extra limbs back in, trying not to crush Tim to its chest as it doubled over panting. The sulphurous fumes were making its head spin. “We made a deal.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Michael grinned, mouth twisting at the edges. “So we did.”</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>He grabbed the handle and swung his door wide. Martin hurried inside. Michael followed him, holding the fleshy cape like a precious gift. As he looked down at his prize, there was a burning thing behind his eyes, almost worse than the hellmouth currently consuming the servants of the Stranger. Almost.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>It could not help but look back. Flames climbed the rafters. The hole in the center of the stage devoured everything in sight, darkness and fire and no end within. Through the acrid smoke, it saw Nikola clinging to the lip of the pit, her plastic fingers melting up the edge.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Then the board she was gripping cracked in two, and she plunged below.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>For a moment it could hear her screaming, and the discordant music still echoing, and the choir wailing like the end of the world. But they faded into the black. The ceiling started to cave in, the last strains of the Unknowing muffled by the groan of the museum collapsing and the crackling flames.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>No power could burn this from its memory: standing at the entrance to the Spiral, watching the death-throes of its promised land. The Stranger’s victory had fallen to ashes, and it was to blame.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>When it scrubbed at its face, it wiped away paint and soot and tears.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>It knew it would be forsaken before it felt the snap within. But it was still utterly unprepared for the brittle breaking of a part so entwined to its soul as to be inextricable. Countless years of pouring terror into the grasp of its god, and being filled with holiness in return, and in an instant nothing remained. They had opened the black burning abyss inside its chest, and left only wasteland.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>Pain like it had never known coiled through its body. It staggered through the door, collapsing into Martin’s arms. The world wavered in its vision. The last thing it saw before the darkness rushed in was Martin’s worried dark eyes, beneath the web-shaped fracture of his cracked glasses.</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>How much choice had it ever really had, in the end?</i>
  </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>
    <i>But there was no answer. There was nothing at all.</i>
  </i>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0015"><h2>15. Chapter 15</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It awoke in the blackened castle, staring at the flaking ornate ceiling. No way to tell how much time had passed. Though the wall behind it was dominated by three huge lead-paned windows, these rooms would not permit a single ray of sunlight. An hour or a week would have felt the same. The taste of wax and smoke still lingered beneath its tongue.</p><p>Its lolling neck had been propped up against three sets of pillows, and many of its limbs hung off the sides of the bed. It heard labored breathing close by, like a starving animal. But after a while it realized that it was alone, listening to its own struggle for air. The world felt heavy on its chest.</p><p>It could not pull back to any of its human guises. When it tried to move, to raise its head, pain skittered out from the edges of its peeling face. The skin was raw underneath, stinging in the cold air. Even blinking hurt. So it lay there, a thin thing scraped off the pavement, helpless and unloved.</p><p>The Archives team had prevented the Unknowing, and apparently returned to the safehouse. That must mean Martin was safe. And perhaps Tim, since last it remembered, he’d been unconscious but alive after Nikola’s savage attack.</p><p>They had not abandoned it in the corridors of the Spiral, or tossed it back into the burning void. Unfortunately, their kindness made little difference. Even shut up in the artifact of the Web for years, it had kept the comfort of the Stranger, the purpose of its existence. But when that connection splintered and Martin caught its falling form, his touch had brought no taste of fear, no chance to overtake his body.</p><p>There would be no new world, and no old joys. All that it had left was the weight of its betrayal, pressing on every inch of its flesh, crushing it down to nothing.</p><p>A silhouette appeared in the door. Through the darkness, it made out the fuzzy edges of familiar pajamas.</p><p>“Martin!”</p><p>His name on its lips burned like an exposed wound, its voice a distorted, dry croak.</p><p>Martin gasped. “You woke up.”</p><p>He hurried toward it, offering a chipped mug that smelled like weak tea. It attempted to shake its head, which instead slid painfully to one side, bunching its neck up like a coiled rope. Martin seemed to understand, and lowered the mug. Eating or drinking never felt particularly pleasant in this form. Besides, any attempt at recovering strength would only be delaying the inevitable.</p><p>“How long…?” it asked.</p><p>Martin set the tea down next to the bed. “Two days since we got out of the House of Wax. We’re okay. I mean Tim is still a bit woozy, and he’d probably go to A&amp;E for head trauma, except he doesn’t want to leave me alone here, and I was waiting for you to...”</p><p>He trailed off, realizing what he’d said. But no matter. It couldn’t help smiling, heedless of how much even that hurt. He’d wanted to be there when it awoke. Martin wasn’t running away or flinging around accusations anymore. Even in this pitiful state, it more than deserved his contempt, for breaking the fragile trust between them by pretending to be Jon during the Unknowing. Maybe he didn’t even remember.</p><p>Whatever the reason, it cherished the sight of him kneeling beside its bed, whole and safe.</p><p>“Anyway,” Martin said, then coughed, and pumped his fist in an attempt at cheeriness. “We all won! The world isn’t completely wrong anymore. Sasha and Leitner broke into the Archives and kicked Elias out. I tried to follow along when she explained what happened, how they fought, but everything sounded confusing and really scary. I’m just glad they’re alright. She’s been in touch. They’re holding down the fort over there and looking through the statements he was hiding. We’re going to find a way to break the Eye’s control, and prevent any ritual he’d planned.”</p><p>“Good,” it said, wincing its way through the word. If Martin did not currently notice its example of the consequences for defying the entity that sustained you, it was not about to disillusion him.</p><p>Martin kept talking. He explained what he’d heard about the Archivist’s quest, the news reports of the collapsed wax museum, Tim’s condition. It tried to listen, to follow along. But everything ached and his voice was so comforting, like waves against a shore. So it closed its eyes and drifted through, not sure who or what to thank for the quiet splendor of this moment.</p><p>After a while, Martin moved a chair over next to the headboard and drained the tea himself. Carefully, he moved its dangling limbs onto the bed as it tried not to shudder. He finished arranging them, leaving it piled on the dirty sheets, feeling like one great gaping wound.</p><p>“I’ll be back soon,” he promised. “Just going to catch up with Tim and grab some statements.”</p><p>When he returned, instead of sitting down, he holed up in the corner and started pacing, muttering out the record to himself.</p><p>It tried to turn toward him, to speak. “What are…?”</p><p>He looked up. “Um, remember when Elias mentioned that I felt better at the archives? After we came out of Michael’s corridors, I could barely stand upright. Reading statements helps. Leitner says Gertrude used to when she was traveling.”</p><p>There were probably a few days after that, while Tim and Martin recovered. The pain bearing down on it had a way of warping time. A divided existence, cleaved between moments with Martin by its side and hours waiting in the darkness. During the nights Martin slept in his own bed instead of dozing in the chair, it stopped fighting. It surrendered to the grinding pressure on every inch of its body, pushing away any other thoughts.</p><p>Food or drink had little effect on its condition. Even listening to Martin read statements of the Stranger failed to clear its head. All the bright colors and shades of fear had been burnt away, a sense as real as human smell or sight cauterized completely.</p><p>It could not feel the touch of power, even lying there enveloped in the influence of the Dark and the Desolation. Martin’s glasses were still cracked at the center, but his attitude hadn’t changed. Even if it could string together enough words to ask him about the spiderweb he wore, there would be no way to tell. Perhaps a coincidence. At least now it could delude itself, long enough to enjoy the time they had.</p><p>One morning, Tim and Martin began to argue outside the doorway. It caught snippets of their conversation.</p><p>“—pretty clearly need to gather strength,” Tim said.</p><p>Rustling, probably Martin thrusting a stack of paper at him. “There’s still a few statements left to tide us over.”</p><p>“I’m not convinced they’re actually helping. Last time I was in here, you were muttering over blank paper and reciting one of the ones we’ve already burned.”</p><p>“Okay, but I’ve been more careful since then.”</p><p>“So why are we waiting? Any number of otherworldly beasties could be beating down the door to the institute, and we wouldn’t find out in time to do anything. This can’t be your priority right now. I mean, you do know it’s dying, right?”</p><p>Martin’s voice turned cold. “So what, we just abandon it? My mum’s dying too, and I still kept at this horrible job to help pay for her nursing home.”</p><p>“Shit, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that.”</p><p>“I know, I know. Of course I want to help Sasha. But I see it hurting so much, all the time, because it saved us and saved the world. Look, I’m not a fighter, like you. But I’m...good at taking care. Don’t ask me to leave.”</p><p>Tim nodded. “We can work things out. Let’s call Sasha soon.”</p><p>Later on, they found another chair, and put the Archivist on speakerphone. Martin must have insisted they talk in this room, but that didn’t matter. Even if it could barely say a word, it was still a part of their scrappy, grudging team.</p><p>“We sent another mailer from Elias’s account about the fumigators we made up, saying that the building was completely off-limits,” the Archivist said. “But people keep asking about coming back in to retrieve their work. So we have to start tomorrow night, before Monday. Leitner has the CO2 set up in the back of the Institute. I’ll light up the Archives, and then try to leave.”</p><p>Tim frowned at his phone, as if she could see him across the miles. “Not really liking this word ‘try’.”</p><p>“No Archivist has gotten this far, though we think that’s what Gertrude was up to before Elias took her out.”</p><p>“So no one knows what will happen,” Martin said. “And everything might be fine—”</p><p>“I’ve got an exact escape route,” she said. “But if setting the fire does something to me, like our Stranger, I might not be strong enough to get out. Taking down this place, that’s worth the risk.” A pause, heavy as the crushing weight on its chest. “Tim...I love you.”</p><p>Tim stood up, hand rising to cover his face. He walked in a small circle and shook his head, opening his mouth and then sighing before he was finally able to talk. “Let me be there.”</p><p>“No, coming up here would be too dangerous, and only Leitner and I need to—”</p><p>“Let him join you, Sasha,” Martin said. “Please. I’ll be alright. You two have a choice. Don’t waste that.”</p><p>A long silence stretched between them. Finally, her voice came through, shaking on the other end of the line. “Okay. See you soon.”</p><p>A few hours later, while Martin gathered supplies, Tim slipped into its room.</p><p>When he saw the quizzical expression on its face, Tim shrugged. “Martin’s still puttering around out there. I think he’s packing me lunch and a thermos. Never thought I’d feel so mothered, going off to commit terrorism.”</p><p>He sat down across from it.</p><p>“I should really be enjoying seeing you like this more than I am,” Tim said. “I miss Jon every damn day. When I heard how you killed him, under my fucking nose while I was trying everything to stop your circus cult, I wanted to cut you open. And I’ve read the statements about you now, so I know that’s only the beginning of the suffering you’ve caused. But that wasn’t what did you in, though.”</p><p>“No,” it said, in a rasping echo.</p><p>“Are you even able to die? Or was our last chance at being rid of you that fiery pit?”</p><p>“Don’t know.”</p><p>This was the question it had been avoiding. Slowly slipping away would be endurable. It was used to waiting. But since its awakening, there had been no meaningful difference from day to day. The thrum of pain pushing down on it seemed unalterable, steady as the hidden dawn.</p><p>After the assistants left, no humans would naturally find the castle. The cults that had desecrated the grounds were too afraid to return. Even a few years trapped in the table had slowed time to a crawling pace, and its sprawling history made it all too aware of the length of eternity. Part of it welcomed the pantomime of justice. But underneath it feared lying in the darkness forever, unable to move or even scream.</p><p>If it could die, then who had enough power to kill it? The Eye and the Stranger were opposed enough to inflict real damage. The Archivist’s abilities might be its only chance at changing things. And the Archives would soon be no more.</p><p>Tim looked away. “Well, I’m not forgiving you, even if you did save me. But part of the reason I’m going back to Sasha is so she doesn’t end up like...this.” He gestured to its twisted flesh. “So here’s some advice. Talk to Martin. He cares about helping you. Let him know what would actually help.”</p><p>He still wanted it dead so badly. He looked down on it with a pity almost indistinguishable from disgust. But it had no spite left within, for his scars and stubbornness. Maybe it would even miss him.</p><p>He was wrong, though. If it somehow found the strength to choke out anything more than a few words, it wouldn’t be worth asking. The Archivist was unlikely to give up her strategic position. Martin cared about staying by its side, but breaking Elias’s hold on the Archives was more important.</p><p>After Tim departed, Martin came back in. He didn’t say anything, just busied himself with cleaning up the room. He replaced its pillows, swept ash off the bed, and used his torch to illuminate the dust in every corner.</p><p>Nothing could change the true condition of their black prison: cracked plaster in the ceiling, piles of rubble everywhere, the musty smell that never faded. Trailing down from the leaded windows, it saw thin strands of silk.</p><p>“Spiderwebs,” it said.</p><p>Martin turned, torchlight reflecting off the fracture on his glasses. “Uh, sorry I missed those. Hard habit to break, not wanting to disturb them. I don’t think they’re related to any dread fears, though. Just normal, non-creepy spiders. Leitner said—”</p><p>It rolled its eyes, trying to jerk its head back toward the thick strings glittering in the light of the torch. “Get rid.”</p><p>Its neck tipped off the pillows, and the words came out squashed and muffled.</p><p>“What did you say?” Martin asked.</p><p>His voice felt like a reeling hook. The force of compulsion crackled through its already-battered body.</p><p>“I want you to get rid of them,” it said, and for the first time since the Unknowing speaking didn’t hurt.</p><p>Instead, the hurting came after.</p><p>The words burned in its chest, tightening the squeezing pressure, worming fingers under its ribs. It gasped and jolted, and Martin rushed to its side.</p><p>He cupped its shoulder, worry in his dark blue eyes. “Are you alright?”</p><p>And again he spoke in power, forcing it to answer.</p><p>“I can talk to you, when the Beholding opens my mouth. Speaking feels like my lips are peeled away and my lungs are being pulverized. I am so weak, and when you use my words to feed your master, I have no defenses. That’s good, though, that’s what I need.”</p><p>Martin let out a wordless squawk and leapt back, as if he was damaging it by touching its shoulder, not with his voice.</p><p>He put his hand over his mouth and shook his head. But then he must have noticed something imploring in its expression. He lowered his fingers, sighed, and chose his next question with obvious care.</p><p>“Why...why would you want that, if I’m hurting you?”</p><p>It had thought before to spare him from its despair. But there was no way to elude his gaze, or hide the truths his god pulled out like entrails. “I do not wish to suffer in the endless dark. Don’t leave me trapped again. Let me face the End.”</p><p>The taste of further pain was almost sweet. It let the question carry it through, unable and unwilling to collapse beneath the weight of its words.</p><p>“If the Archivist’s plan fails, you’ll be up against Elias, and you will need all the strength you can take. Think of this as a final gift from me, or your final revenge, whichever brings you peace. I can teach you how to feed. My last statement, a total history of the fear and violence I was proud to inflict upon this world. You’ll hate me.”</p><p>Martin lowered himself to the chair beside it. “No. I wish I could.”</p><p>Without the force of a compelled question, its next words were wheezing gasps. “Will you ask?”</p><p>“I…” Martin leaned down, and slipped his hands into his pockets. His eyes widened with what he found there. He drew out a tape recorder that definitely hadn’t been in his trousers a moment ago, tacit approval from the power behind his voice. A listener just for them.</p><p>“Okay.” Martin started the reel whirring. “Statement of what was once a stranger.” As he spoke, the clicking hum of the recorder echoed underneath his light, beautiful voice. He reached out, and wrapped his palm around the wrist of one of its spindly limbs. “Tell me everything. Tell me how we met. Tell me how you loved me. I’ll listen, and I’ll stay with you until there’s nothing left to say.”</p><p>It opened its mouth, wincing as its cracked lips stretched. It wanted to begin with the moment it took his hand on the stretcher, when Jon’s love sent rushing wildfire to the heart it had never truly felt blood in. It wanted to begin with the nasty man who tied it to the table, the agony of empathy wound tight and viscous round its throat and hands. It wanted to begin with Martin’s kiss, his face in its hands, his back up against its prison, his own trap ever more deadly.</p><p>But that was not what he had asked.</p><p>The unmaking it craved demanded complete surrender in return.</p><p>“I didn’t start out as a human,” it said, to its own surprise. “For ages, the minds I wore weren’t complex enough, which prevented me from truly knowing myself. Scaring the other animals, flitting from body to body, that was a reflex, a muddled yearning. After I became human, I began to recognize taking victims as something akin to prayer.”</p><p>This was not the bargain. This was eons ago, far from any part that Martin would care about. But the grinding pressure on its bones and the burning at its lips built up to a slow, satisfying torture it could not escape.</p><p>“They killed me, you know. I have been murdered so many different times, in every way you can imagine. But nothing ever took, and I confess I almost saw this as a game. Scare the others, and feed on their terror. Maybe I’ll live through the night, and maybe I’ll go looking for a new victim. I worked hard to imitate them, because I loved them. After I experienced humanity, I refused to return to beasts or crawling things. You must understand, so much of my life has been an uncomplicated joy. There are no words to describe that freedom.”</p><p>Martin shivered. “And you never felt...bad about what you did?”</p><p>“I wasn’t even able to suffer, back then. I barely held onto their memories, let alone wallowed in them. I noticed that no matter how I acted, at least one person that had known my prey could recognize what I was. They remembered, and they usually put up a fight. Their fear was the sweetest. And when humans started to build cities...”</p><p>On and on it went, spilling every detail, through hundreds of years and thousands of faces. At this rate, the statement would take hours. But it could not break from the compulsion, and it understood somewhere deep inside that this was what Beholding required, more than it had ever given.</p><p>All through, Martin sat by its side, recorder in his hands, eyes as deep as the darkness that enveloped them.</p><p>They were somewhere in the 1100s AD, during the years it had enjoyed creating havoc in the Jurchen Jin dynastic court, when the door creaked open.</p><p>Silhouetted in the doorway stood Elias Bouchard.</p><p>For the first time, he wasn’t wearing his full suit, seeming almost naked in comparison with his untucked white shirt and creased trousers. His waxed hair was covered in ash. In one hand he held a large piece of masonry from the castle. The other rose from his side, and the barrel of his gun glinted in the tiny amount of light.</p><p>Martin stood up, moving in front of it. As if an assistant brandishing a running recorder posed any threat to the truest avatar of the Eye.</p><p>“No,” it said, voice cracking.</p><p>Elias smiled. “Please don’t stop on my account. Let’s hear the rest.” He shifted to face it, and aimed the gun straight for Martin’s chest. “What do you think will happen at the end?”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0016"><h2>16. Chapter 16</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Archivist and the Librarian had locked Elias away from the Magnus Institute. They had planned together in the darkest sections of the castle, where he could not See. While it gave Martin its ultimate statement, the others were supposed to be burning the Archives to the ground. They wanted to send the thousands of stories and secrets that fueled Elias’s power up in smoke.</p>
<p>Yet somehow, he was in their castle safehouse with a gun trained on Martin instead, calm and cunning as ever. And it had no way left to stop him. It was a wisp of its former self, spread out and confined to the bed, only able to properly speak through compulsion.</p>
<p>Elias wound his other arm back, and threw the piece of masonry he held at the largest window.</p>
<p>The carved rock hit the center of the arch. Lead and glass rained down, causing Martin to scream and duck. It was mostly protected by the headboard, but given the pain it already endured, a few cuts wouldn’t have registered anyway.</p>
<p>In the aftermath, the top half of the window was smashed completely. The purple-silver haze of dawn flooded into the room, though the rest of the glass showed only darkness outside. Jagged rays of light fell across its twisted form, the first real warmth it had felt in days.</p>
<p>“Apologies,” Elias said, although his smug smile never wavered. “The next part will be easier with some illumination.”</p>
<p>So he’d broken the room’s connection to the Dark, increasing the strength of his powers here. It tried to open its mouth to warn Martin. But the spell of the statement had claimed its lips, and it could say nothing that mattered, nothing that could protect Martin in any way.</p>
<p>Martin lowered his arms from over his head and stood back up. He adjusted his already-shattered glasses. “What are you doing here?”</p>
<p>“I’m here to offer you a promotion. You see, I’ve recently been disappointed by the performance by our Head Archivist. Now I know you’re not exactly traditionally qualified, but I believe the opportunity suits your unique experience.”</p>
<p>Martin stepped forward, glass and debris crunching under his shoes, blocking it with his body. “I won’t—”</p>
<p>Elias cocked the gun. “Filling the position is under my full operational discretion.”</p>
<p>Martin gulped and put his hands up, but he didn’t let go of the recorder.</p>
<p>“Now I know what you’re thinking,” Elias said, and chuckled to himself at his joke. “‘You won’t win, my friends are working to destroy the Archives as we speak!’ I agree, quite a complication, one that would have been the end of my plans eighty years ago. But the Blitz showed me that I could no longer rely on London alone. Now there are other institutions that can be utilized as sources for Beholding. Our sister organizations—”</p>
<p>“Wait, wait, hang on. You were alive during the Blitz?”</p>
<p>He shook his head. “Oh Martin, I still have so much to teach you. There will be time, of course. Once we’ve built up a base again, and once you arrive more fully in your power. Come along, now.”</p>
<p>The gaps of dawn leaking from the broken window illuminated Martin’s broad back. His shoulders trembled, but he didn’t move an inch.</p>
<p>Elias frowned. “You still think you can fight me. You see yourself as closer to the rotting thing in that bed, to your doomed friends, than to the Eye that binds us both. Very well. I could show you the truth, but since your transformation is upon us, I don’t even need to. Would you like to tell me what is currently happening at the Archives?”</p>
<p>Martin gritted out something that sounded like “Nn.”</p>
<p>Elias shrugged. “Too late.”</p>
<p>“Sstt—” The moment he opened his mouth, something ancient and rooted rumbled beneath his words. “Sasha James is in the foyer, sitting in an uncomfortable chair. She is thinking about the first time she walked into the Institute. She waited in the exact same chair for her job interview.”</p>
<p>“Very good, Archivist,” Elias said.</p>
<p>Martin tried to move his hand over his mouth, but Elias shook his head. He pressed closer, until the gun rested lightly on Martin’s chest.</p>
<p>Martin continued, words ever more frantic. “Now she can feel the heat creeping from behind the door. She wants to run, but she lost feeling in her legs after the explosion. She used the last of her strength to crawl up to the chair. So she sits there, gripping the scorching plastic edge, watching the ends of her fingers turn black.”</p>
<p>It could hear the agony and revulsion in his voice, but his words did not stumble. The vision flowing from his lips was clearer and clearer with each moment.</p>
<p>“She wasn’t even close to the blast, but she knows now that proximity never mattered. The second the wave of force ripped through the building, she felt everything. She can track the path of the fire as the blaze eats through her body, bubbling under her skin. Each new room consumed by the flames is a new piece of searing pain. She is the Archives, has been for months, and she has destroyed herself.”</p>
<p>“Only for a little while longer, as you now know,” Elias said. “Let’s check in on our friend Tim.”</p>
<p>“Timothy Stoker is hurdling himself against the front door to the institute. His shoulders are bruised, and he coughs smoke from his lungs. Still he throws his weight at the old wood, desperate to find a way inside. She told him to wait for her, but she never came out.”</p>
<p>Martin gasped.</p>
<p>“The door is breaking!” he cried. “He’s pushing harder, until he can feel the weakest bit give way, and he collapses to the floor. The carpet scratches against his cheek, and he’s so tired. He could just curl up and sleep, but then he hears her calling.”</p>
<p>Elias laughed. “How touching.”</p>
<p>“When Tim picks himself up, he sees her through the smoke. She is leaning against the melting chair, her hands and forearms already charred black. He understands, in that moment, that there is nothing he can do to save her. And the despair hits him completely, the hopelessness he’s tried to push away since Danny. She says his name again. She tells him to leave. And he could. He still could.”</p>
<p>“But he won’t,” Elias said.</p>
<p>Martin took in a gasping breath, wiped at his eyes beneath his broken glasses. Elias kept talking.</p>
<p>“Like so many that you’ve loved, he’ll choose the simplicity of sacrifice over the possibility of becoming. Just look at the mess you have here, once a feared monster and our sworn enemy. Now it’s not even able to speak without you pulling its strings. Do you see the road that stretches ahead now? You’re the last one standing.”</p>
<p>Martin shook his head. “No, there’s still one perspective left. You never asked me about Leitner.”</p>
<p>Elias knocked the tip of the gun against his ribs. “Trying to stall won’t help you.”</p>
<p>“Yes, I can See,” Martin said, his voice rising like the dawn. “Jurgen Leitner is in the tunnels under the Institute. He feels the explosion shake the building, reverberate through his old bones. He moves faster, clenching the map in the palm of his hand. Sweat beads down his temple, from concentrating on reading, moving the tunnels to align with the path.”</p>
<p>Elias tested his grip. “Shut up or <i>I'll make you</i>.”</p>
<p>“You’ll want to hear this,” Martin said. He pressed forward, ignoring the gun. “He’s at the Millbank Prison ruins now. He’s looking for you.”</p>
<p>Elias glanced around wildly, as if this dusty room held any answers. “He’ll never—Gertrude couldn’t have told him before I killed her—”</p>
<p>“She left enough clues, though. That’s why they needed all that time alone in the Archives before lighting the blaze. He didn’t even tell Sasha about the way to Milbank or what waits inside, since he suspected you’d still be monitoring her.” Martin grinned, and knocked the gun aside. Revelation dawned over his face. “He’s there. In the Panopticon, standing in front of your original body.”</p>
<p>Elias tried to speak. Instead, he choked on his words and doubled over, grabbing his throat. The gun clattered to the ground.</p>
<p>“He’s using a knife,” Martin said, helpfully.</p>
<p>Elias looked up. Blood poured from his eyes, clumps of red rolling down his hollow cheeks, staining the white collar of his shirt. Beneath his trembling hand a dark gash stretched across his throat.</p>
<p>He crumpled to his knees, head tipping back unnaturally. The pale skin of his neck parted, folding on itself and spreading into spindly red lashes. An enormous green-gold eye blinked open over his Adam’s apple. One fat drop of blood gathered in the corner and leaked out, then another, until the wound appeared to be weeping.</p>
<p>A collection of red horizontal lines seeped through his shirt, the exact same shape as the golden eye. It could only imagine what was happening to the skin underneath. A muffled sound echoed from his throat, like an aborted scream. Above the hinged angle of his chin, it caught the flashing white of a sclera where his tongue should have been.</p>
<p>All at once the eyes closed into ugly wounds, and the two on his face burst. White-pink pulp oozed down his cheeks as Elias slumped forward. He lay there twitching. The empty sockets in his skull were still bleeding, staining the discarded gun, pooling dark on the floor with the glass and the ashes.</p>
<p>Martin said something that sounded like “Eughh,” and hopped back. “Oh god, he’s really gone. Oh god, I think some got on my shoes. Are...are you alright?”</p>
<p>It looked up at him. If he had not asked with the force of compulsion behind his voice, it might have been too stunned to say a thing. “Hardly. I can’t even talk without your power anymore.”</p>
<p>“I feel incredible,” he said. “That’s, oh, that’s probably bad...he must have done something to me, one of his weird contracts. And I don’t have the Institute to help, everyone else is...there’s no walking away now, is there? Feels like I’ll have to wade in deeper to even find a way back to the shore.”</p>
<p>But he must have known that long ago. He must have known the moment he took it in his arms. Once a thing of fear decided it wanted you, god or monster or man or any horrible combination, there were no easy exits.</p>
<p>Slowly, he lowered himself back into the chair, and ran a hand through his mussed hair. “But I’m keeping you waiting. I made a promise. You shouldn’t suffer anymore.”</p>
<p>It tried to nod. The only thing it needed in the end was Martin’s weary smile, proof of the steady light he carried, the strength no fear could truly extinguish. A shard remained, deep in its heart, that could not bear to leave him. Still, to use his metaphor, Martin was only learning how to swim. He deserved more than to be dragged beneath by his guilt.</p>
<p>“Thank you for listening,” it said, and meant every word.</p>
<p>No masks, no new names, no secret glee, no bodies left behind. It would be known, each stitch slowly ripped apart under the Eye.</p>
<p>“So why did you leave the Jurchen court?” Martin asked, and the tape recorder hissed, and the telling began again.</p>
<p>Dawn had fled into daylight by the time they reached the new millennium. It talked about Carl Moore, its last unimpeded transformation. Details were hard to pick out now, the world a haze of shapes through the pain clouding its vision. Despite the light from the broken window, Martin remained in shadow, eyes black as death. His quiet questions plucked each story from its shriveled mouth.</p>
<p>It told him about the nasty man forcing it to make the table its tomb, the agonizing waiting in the antiques shop. But when it described taking the female customer, it noticed Martin’s breathing had become shallow.</p>
<p>Even with its fading sight, it recognized that he was crying. But the statement had become stronger than either of them, rushing toward the present. So it did not stop talking, even as his chest rose and fell and tears slipped down his cheeks. It could not stop, even when he reached up to wipe his nose and it saw the gossamer spider-strand on his wrist catch the light.</p>
<p>Something small and black skittered over his shoulder. Martin raised his head, examined his own arm. There, sloping down from the back of his palm to its emaciated body, was a sticky line of web.</p>
<p>“I remember her,” he said, voice hitching as he struggled through the tears. “Her name was Claire Bevan. She was born in 1967, on the outskirts of Newport, but she moved all over the Isles after her parents’ divorce when she was twelve. That’s why she got involved in council government, she wanted to put down roots. Her girlfriend’s uncle got her into antiquing, and after his wife died, she visited his shop every day to check in on him. Her girlfriend used to tease her, said at that rate she’d end up with more furniture than flat, but they both knew why she went. How…how do I know that?”</p>
<p>None of those details had been in its statement. And as he spoke, another string unfolded between them.</p>
<p>Martin flinched, scrubbing at his hands, but the strand held taut. “You said the table made you keep their memories. The table was destroyed, but I can see her, I know her.”</p>
<p>But those memories were not from the table. They were a life without the emotional bleed, and they hadn’t left when the Archivist took an axe to its prison. They had been lost inside the Ancient Hide, which had flaked away in a blaze of fire.</p>
<p>It remembered that moment, standing in Gertrude’s storage facility. It remembered the press of the lighter, the embossed spiderweb design shining in the low light.</p>
<p>Maybe that was why Tim had accused Martin of reading a statement they’d already burned. Every scrap of knowledge they’d fed to the flames they had given to something else, like insects spun up and trapped for later use.</p>
<p>And the Archivist had brought the lighter with her when she set the institute ablaze. It had a sickening feeling that was how she’d begun. She’d flicked her fingers against cold metal, unable to see the strings.</p>
<p>No wonder Martin had grown stronger in these past few hours.  If he looked properly, he could probably see any statement he liked, scrawled on his shattered glasses. The Mother of Puppets had made an Archivist of her very own.</p>
<p>It broke away from the force guiding their recollection to give Martin his answer, in what strained words it could muster. “The Web is giving them back, giving you everything.”</p>
<p>He wouldn’t understand now, but he deserved the warning.</p>
<p>“I guess someone ought to finally remember.” Martin shook his head, steadied his voice. “Alright. Let’s keep going.”</p>
<p>He thought this was just about the lives it had taken. If only it had the voice to tell him more, but it was caught in the statement again.</p>
<p>Instead, it told him about trying to escape its imprisonment while wearing Claire Bevan, managing to contact Breekon and Hope. They delivered the table to another victim. It knew to slow down here, to wait for Martin to stop crying, for the next thread to weave from Archivist to monster. He took in every moment it could remember, even the ones that never belonged to it in the first place.</p>
<p>“Then my friends addressed the table to the Archivist and dropped me off at the Institute,” it said. “I waited for months, lost in the darkness. Until he found me.”</p>
<p>Martin buried his head in his hands. Silk fell from his fingers, and the web over them both glowed in the broken sunlight.</p>
<p>“His face,” he whispered. “I didn’t...after you burnt the Hide, I couldn’t even remember his face…”</p>
<p>The entirety of Jonathan Sims’s life was in his reach, scrawled behind his eyes. Jon’s unhappy, lonely childhood. The day that made him chase after Leitner and fear the Spider. His tribulations in uni. Years spent working for the Institute before transferring to the Archives.</p>
<p>He must have looked exactly as he used to, like in the polaroid Martin carried around. Brown skin and prematurely greying hair and sharp features that almost passed for handsome. To Martin, this must feel like waking up after the longest nightmare.</p>
<p>To the thing entangled by his side, knowing that Martin could see Jon’s face again brought the purest relief. Like letting out a breath that had built for eons inside its chest. In that moment, it had no strength to worry about the machinations of the Web, or leaving Martin to walk into his new life alone bearing powers he could not comprehend, or what waited after.</p>
<p>All that remained was watching Martin rise up from his elbows through the veil of fading light. It did not stay to hear him murmur “statement ends”. It clung to one last glimpse of his smile and let its love carry it through, until all it could see were his gray-blue eyes, seared into its vision long after the rest had blurred to darkness.</p>
<p>-</p>
<p>“Jonathan Sims,” Tim said, giving a little flourish.</p>
<p>Jon turned, clutching a folder to his chest. He saw a broad, taller man, with tan skin and shaggy black hair, dressed in a faded button-up.</p>
<p>Tim clapped them both, a hand for each shoulder. “And Martin Blackwood. I think that’s the whole team.”</p>
<p>Jon stepped back, flinching. He swore he’d told Tim not to touch him. This new man, whoever he was with his baby face and smudged round glasses, had already started looking at him curiously. Which made him panic even more, because for some reason, he wanted to impress his frankly unimpressive-looking fellow assistant. Odd, how your brain could file people away like an internal catalog system. The guy would probably think he was a creep.</p>
<p>Not really normal, to see a stranger and feel for all the world like you were coming home.</p>
<p>Best to not make things weird. He could endure an introductory handshake, and then explain the touch-averse part later.</p>
<p>Jon braced himself, and stuck out his hand.</p>
<p>“Hi Jon,” the man said, and they shook. His voice was soft, a lot higher-pitched than his size suggested. His grip was firm. His eyes were lovely, a faded blue like lead.</p>
<p>“Hi...Martin?” he tried, and oh, that smile. That smile would definitely be a problem. Had he let go of his grip yet? Did he even want to? Was he really losing his composure over his badly-dressed coworker at ten in the morning?</p>
<p>He coughed and jerked his hand away, trying not to let his disappointment show. “Anyway, Tim, did you ask Sasha about the team meeting agenda?”</p>
<p>“I think the agenda is to get us all in the same room,” Tim said. “Maybe tea. Martin makes a mean cuppa.”</p>
<p>“Not really—” Martin jogged a bit to keep up with them. “Um, nice to meet you, Jon.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, er, likewise. How long have you been with…?”</p>
<p>Martin stammered. He started vomiting his resume like he was making things up on the spot, and that little burst of electricity when their eyes met faded a bit. Alright, so the attraction would be manageable. He was just another superstitious enthusiast excited for his silly spook job.</p>
<p>Yet the weight of Martin’s hand in his lingered, making Jon rub at his palm. That might have been the first time in years he’d touched someone and hadn’t felt awful afterward. Maybe they’d be good for each other, even as colleagues. No use entertaining the idea of anything more.</p>
<p>After he slouched back to his cubicle, he couldn’t resist shaping the name on his lips. Martin Blackwood, huh.</p>
<p>If nothing else, it would be nice to have a new face around.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thank you so so much for sticking with me, reading, commenting, and yelling about the story! Writing, editing, and posting has been an absolute delight.</p>
<p>I like to include the fanmixes I write to at the end of my stories.  This one is a Not!Jon specific POV playlist (link takes you to Spotify).</p>
<p> </p>
<p>  <b><br/>    <a href="https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1FrTY6Z6uSchVks03GJZR9">Better Strangers Mix</a><br/>  </b></p>
<p> </p>
<p>For being in love with the boyfriend of the guy you murder-replaced and also vaguely guilty about all of that...</p>
<p>New Skin by Verite: New heart, new limbs to bury myself in / new love, new skin</p>
<p>This December by Ricky Montgomery: Only in my darkest moments / I wanna see you with your head wide open</p>
<p>The One You Really Love by the Magnetic Fields: I made you mine / or so it seemed / though he is dead he haunts your dreams</p>
<p>I’m Not Calling You A Liar by Florence + The Machine: There's a ghost in my lungs / and it sighs in my sleep</p>
<p>Waste by Oh Wonder: I said I would never come back / screaming at the walls in jet black</p>
<p>Human by Dodie: Will you share your soul with me / unzip your skin and let me have a see?</p>
<p>The Horror of Our Love by Ludo: I want you stuffed into my mouth / hold you down and tear you open / live inside you</p>
<p>Nothing’s Gonna Hurt You Baby by Cigarettes After Sex: Nothing's gonna hurt you baby / nothing’s gonna take you from my side</p>
<p>There’s Too Much Love by Belle and Sebastian: You say I've got another face / that’s not a fault of mine these days</p>
<p>I’ve Got You Under My Skin by Frank Sinatra: I'd sacrifice anything / come what might / for the sake of having you near</p>
<p>Hostage by Billie Eilish: Let me crawl inside your veins / I'll build a wall, give you a ball and chain</p>
<p>Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me by Johnny Mathis: But they never stood in the dark with you, love / when you take me in your arms / and drive me slowly out of my mind</p>
<p>Everybody Wants to Rule The World by Lorde: There's a room where the light won't find you / holding hands while the walls come tumbling down</p>
<p>Prelude 12/21 by AFI: I promise to depart / just promise one thing / kiss my eyes and lay me to sleep</p>
<p>This Night by Black Lab: I know I'm not forgiven / but I need a place to sleep</p>
<p>I Will Be Blessed by Ben Howard: When the world comes to gather me in / oh if you're there / I will be blessed</p>
<p>Ready Now by Dodie: You said, "I will listen / tell it all”</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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